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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



Perfect Health. 

An Exhaustive Treatise 
—ON- 
NATURAL LAWS THAT MAKE AND MAINTAIN 

PERFECT HEALTH 

AND 

Perfect Human Development. 

WRITTEN FROM EXPERIENCE — NOT THEORY. 
BY 

Harry Bennett Weinburgh, 

) WHOM WAS AWARDED JANUARY 6, ig02. Till PRIZE FOR THE 
BEST DEVELOPED MAN IN AM.YKl' \ 



New York. 

PETER ECKLER, PUBLISHER, 

35 Fulton Street. 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

MAY I 1903 

Copyright Entry 
CUAMQa' XX©, No. 



^ 



Copyright, 
Nineteen hundred-three, 

by 
Harry Bennett Weinburgh 

AND 

Eugene Christian. 



PRINTED, ELECTROTYPED AND BOUND BY 
PETER ECKLEK, 35 FULTON ST., N. Y. 




doling people of Hmerica, 



ON WHOM WILL DEPEND THE 

Social. Commercial anb political jfuture 
of our Glorious Country 

I MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE THIS WORK'. 

Harry Bennett Weinburgh. 






This is the picture that caused Mr. 
Weinburgh to be called from Hartford 
to New York, to undergo personal ex- 
amination by the jury that awarded 
him the prize for being the most per- 
fectly developed man in America. It 
is regarded by artists as showing per- 
fect muscular and at the same time 
pefect symmetrical development, two 
things never before attained by an 
American athlete. 



c 



WHY. 

i$L HAVE written this book be- 
i^M' cause I feel it my duty to con- 
tribute to humanity the knowledge I 
gained in coming from a hopeless state 
of invalidism to perfect health and 
physique. All those who are in the 
remotest way benefited by the facts 
recited in these pages will owe to 

Mr. EUGENE CHRISTIAN 
of New York, a debt co-equal with 
myself. His assistance has been in- 
valuable to me in the preparation of 
this work. His long experience on 
the road from sickness to health, has 
given to his knowledge the rank of an 
authority. 

THE AUTHOR. 

(7) 



COMMON ILLS MAKE THE 
WORLD AKIN. 




AVING lost my health a few 
years ago by ignorance and 
violation of natural laws, and regained 
it by obeying them, much as Mr. 
Weinburgh did, I feel greatly in har- 
mony with him, and my assistance in 
the preparation of this work has been 
one of love and gratitude for the re- 
turn of perfect health. 

It has been my good fortune to know 
him intimately and also to know the 
experience and knowledge he gained in 
his struggle with disease upon which 
experience he has drawn in giving to 
the world what I regard as one of the 
most valuable contributions ever made 
to people (especially the young people) 
of any country bv a man of his years. 

C9> 



IO COMMON ILLS MAKE THE WORLD AKIN. 

What is the value of perfect health? 
How much is a perfectly developed 
body worth? Of what value is it to 
know how to obtain these things ? 
These are questions that should be 
asked and answered once a day by 
every human being. 

How much benefit is a man to his 
country who has blazed the way, not 
only for the healthy, — but who arose 
from the ranks of the afflicted and 
comes to the sick, — the unhealthy, — the 
invalid, — the rheumatic and the cripple, 
— not with a theory, — not with a mys- 
terious somethingfor sale for dollars, 
— but with a message of hope founded 
upon a fact that he himself has proved 
and demonstrated, as free too as the 
air and sunshine. 

The answer to these questions will 
measure your estimate of Mr. Wein- 
burgh and his book. 

Eugene Christian. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Frontispiece, ii 



Dedication, - 3 

Preface, 7 

Common Ills Make the World Akin, 9 

Index to Illustrations, 13 

Personal Experience, - 15 

Young Men's Christian Association, 30 

The Human Body, - - - - 41 

The Strong Man, 50 

Drugs, ------ 56 

Narcotics, 70 

Women, 93 

Diet, 112 

Over-Eating — Constipation, - 134 

No Breakfast, ----- 143 

Mastication, - - - - - 159 
(11) 



12 CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

Breathing, ------ 177 

Bathing, - - - - - - 209 

Over-Dressing, -'"._-■-'--'-< 226 

Sleep, -;. - - - - - 239 

Walking — Running, - 252 

Rope Skipping, - - - - 265 

What is Physical Culture ? - - 273 

Mankind, - - - - - - - 293 

Synopsis of the Muscular System 331 



INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS. 

WjCF all exercises here shown are 
Hpfil practiced daily or for a reason- 
able period of time each day, they will 
bring into active use and develop every 
muscle in the human body. 

This index, however, is given mainly 
as a guide for those who may desire to 
increase the strength or development 
of certain parts of their physique 

For the Neck Figs. 24 & 25 

"Shoulders ..... " 1-9-10&11 

" "Chest " 1-4 & 11 

" "Back " 26-27-28-29 & 31 

" "Arms " 1-2-15-16-26 & 27 

" "Abdomen " 26-27-28-29-30 & 31 

" Thighs & Calves.. " 21-22 cc 23 
WOMEN. 

For Lower limbs & Constipation. .Fig. A. 



Pelvic Organs 



B. 
C. 
D. 
E. 
F. 



Reducing the Waist 

" Abdomen ... . 
Back-Kidneys & Constipation, 
Spine, Neck & Shoulders. . 

While the figures indicated above 
bring into activity various sets of 
muscles throughout the entire body, 
they are especially recommended for 

(13) 



14 INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS. 

the parts of the body above named. 
There are a number of figures not 
mentioned in this group, which are 
general or whole body exercises, the 
practice of which are absolutely nec- 
essary in making a symmetrically 
and perfectly developed body. Each 
movement should be taken from five 
to ten times, or until signs of fatigue 
are felt. Then change to another 
movement observing the same rule. 

The number of times a movement is 
taken can be increased each day until 
it can be executed twenty to twenty- 
five times without tiring. 

While there are only six female 
figures shown in this work they are 
intended to illustrate movements espe- 
cially designed for developing, strength- 
ening and beautifying the weaker parts 
of the female anatomy — yet every exer- 
cise and suggestion given in the entire 
work can be practiced with perfect safety 
and much benefit by women limited 
only by the time they can devote to 
them and their powers of endurance. 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

i%^HEN one attains his majority, 

££$%£ and looks back over the curious 

pathway of childhood and youth, he 

may well marvel that he has succeeded 

in becoming grown. Sixteen years 

found me well advanced on the road 

towards invalidism, brought on by 

over-feeding and indulgence in coffee, 

tea and sweets. 

I was told I had growing pains. 

If this meant that pains had stages of 

infancy and lusty maturity, then they 

were right, for the pains were nearly 

all there was about me that had any 

perceptible growth until I was eight- 
,~ (15) 



l6 PERFECT HEALTH. 

een. At this period, I was a bed- 
ridden cripple and a prey to every 
alleged remedy that was heard of. 
Doctor after doctor was called in, and 
I swallowed their medicines and filthy 
compounds with no visible change, 
except for the worse. 

At this age, when youth is slowly 
merging into manhood, we are all 
given to indulgence in dreams, visions 
of travel, adventure, supremacy and 
power in some direction to which the 
fancy may lead, but the shadow of 
despair had sullenly settled on dream 
and hope. — The sun of anticipation 
was slowly sinking, — the night of all 
that youth holds dear was approach- 
ing, — and I stood on the verge of 
manhood casting a shadow to the 
East. Night after night I looked into 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I 7 

the future's hopeless abyss and won- 
dered if it were not best to end it all. 

A young man, whose memory I 
much revere, came to share my room. 
He gave me the first thought, — the 
first hope, that had come into my life. 
I will never forget the first time it was 
mentioned. It is a thought both pa- 
thetic and joyous, that memory faith- 
fully brings and lays daily afresh at 
my feet. When I had tried all else 
and failed, my companion said, ''May- 
be a little exercise would help you." 
My reply was, " How can I exercise?" 
He took hold, first of my hands, and 
then of my feet, and moved the elbow r 
and knee up and down. — The pain was 
excruciating. If pain is a penalty for 
the violation of nature's law, I must 
have had to my credit a large sum. 



l8 PERFECT HEALTH. 

After a few days I could move my 
joints without aid. I moved one and 
then another, and still another and 
another, and then all together, until 
pain and enforced circulation caused 
the perspiration to stand out on my 
face like dew. In thirty days, I had a 
hint, and a hint only, of what was to 
be; — in thirty more a faint ray of light 
came into the dungeon of despair — a 
gleam of hope appeared. In four 
months I could walk, really walk, and 
a few more shafts of hope were shed 
through the night of despond — I prized 
and valued the sacredness of health 
now, only because I had lost it. 

As hope slowly returned, — as antici- 
pation grew from a clouded and hazy 
dream into a vague possibility, I made 
one resolve, — one that I have sacredly 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 19 

kept inviolate from that hour, namely, 
that if that coveted, precious and price- 
less prize, called Health, could be lured 
again to my hopeless home, that I 
would work every hour, — that I would 
make every sacrifice, — that I would 
obey every law that nature required, — 
that I would spend that part of life that 
was left in seeking out and patiently 
searching for those laws. 

Standing on the verge of manhood, 
facing backward toward a certain and 
gloomy end, — standing in the sunshine 
of the same year, facing the other way, 
with a sunny future and a glorious 
world before me, — such was the meta- 
morphosis and revelation that came to 
me as a star by day and a pillar of fire 
by night. 

It is here that language fails, — it is 



20 PERFECT HEALTH. 

here that an attempt to convey to the 
mind of another by the use of words 
my feelings, seems a trespass upon 
memories' sacred fanes. There are 
some things that cannot be written, — 
there are emotions that silently ebb 
and flow in the human heart, that no 
language ever coined could paint or 
picture. — It can but tell that they exist. 
— It can never rise to the heights of 
hope, or descend to the depths of grati- 
tude. 

Health had almost come. I could 
see reflected from the mirror of what 
had been accomplished, a figure of 
physical development that seemed to 
hold somewhere within the future, 
health, hope and happiness. 

I became a member of the Young 
Men's Christian Association in the fall 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, 21 

of 1900, and it is to this splendid insti- 
tution that I owe that character of debt 
that is never paid. 

I would retire to the "gym" the 
first thing after my business was over 
for about an hour, gaining all the in- 
formation from the physical instructor 
I could, then working out at home, by 
the long and tedious road of experi- 
ment such movements as would con- 
tribute most to the undeveloped parts 
of my body. 

When I started in the fight and 
struggle for health, I measured four 
feet eleven inches. In less than two 
years I measured five feet five and a 
half inches, a gain of six and a half 
inches, and I measure an inch more 
to-day, and am still growing. In ad- 
dition to this gain in height, I grew 



22 PERFECT HEALTH. 

sturdy and strong. All this cost me 
nothing but a little hard thinking, 
work and time, morning and evening. 
— Is it worth the price ? I appeal to 
the ill, to the afflicted to the pain- 
racked rheumatic — Is it worth the 
price ? 

While the hard work in the u gym" 
brought marvelous results, there was 
yet something wrong. I could not 
acquire that strength and agility that I 
noticed displayed in animals, and which 
I now believe there was no good rea- 
son why a healthy man should not 
possess. It was by the art of compar- 
ison on these lines that I discovered 
what I regard as by far the greatest 
factor in all physical training, and 
without which perfect health and a 
perfect body is impossible. It was 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 23 

diaphragmatic breathing, which is the 
only means of strengthening and in- 
creasing the air cell capacity of the 
lungs or increasing the blood purifying 
powers of the body. 

So I Went back to the beginning 
and started all over again, making 
breathing my principal experiment and 
study. It took almost a year to learn 
how to breathe. The stooped position 
that pain and suffering had caused me 
to assume in all probability made it 
much more difficult for me to breathe 
diaphragmatically. I had the w r ell de- 
veloped habit of chest breathing to 
unlearn, but with this discovery came 
many more. They crowded on so 
thick and fast, and the results were so 
obvious and glorious that it furnished 
entertainment night and day. 






r 

3 



FIG. 1. 

Shows position referred to in Exer- 
cise 6 and 7. 

The arms should be extended as 
shown in figure ; holding the shoulders 
high and pressed to the rear. S^ 

This simple exercise taken every f 
morning and the arms pressed from (<* 
position to the rear as far as possible 
and back, alternately for a few min- 
utes will in a short time give an erect 
and graceful carriage. 



e 




PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 27 

I found experience the only teacher, 
and with this point in view I watched 
my every move. Up to this time I 
had experienced but little appetite for 
food, but with the expansion of the 
lungs, and as it seemed the whole vital 
center system, came an appetite for 
three square meals a day, but after a 
short time something got wrong again. 
— My stomach began to rebel. 

Long experience had taught me that 
when the human machine did not run 
right, there was some good reason. It 
had also taught me to set diligently 
about and find it. So I discovered that 
I was eating more food than was neces- 
sary — more than I could assimilate. I 
discovered there w r as something more 
to be considered in the health question 
than exercise and breathing. So I 



28 PERFECT HEALTH. 

took up the food question, and began 
to thresh it out. I discovered that ap- 
petite could not be depended upon to 
dictate the quantity of food necessary 
to maintain perfect health and diges- 
tion. I have since learned that this is 
a condition that obtains with a great 
majority of people. It could be de- 
pended upon, had we always lived 
naturally and correctly. But by the 
abuse of the dietetic law, we cultivate 
abnormal appetite for food exactly as 
the drinker and smoker cultivates ap- 
petite for tobacco and rum. 

By accident I discovered that the 
breakfast meal was not only wholly 
unnecessary, but actually mischievous. 
It then remained for me to search out 
the kind of food and the proper time to 
partake of the two remaining meals, 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 29 

which I have endeavored to explain in 
my chapter on diet. 

By the spring of 1901 I had attained 
a physical condition that was far more 
surprising to me than to others, be- 
cause I could draw more sharply the 
lines of comparison between what I 
was now, and what I had been only 
two short years before. 

In the summer of 1901 the New 
York yournal offered a prize for the 
most perfectly developed young man 
in America. There were 5,139 con- 
testants. The judges were Watson L. 
Savage, A. M., M. D., Physical Di- 
rector of Columbia University, Harry 
Beecher, Sporting Editor of the New 
York yournal, and Robert Fitzsim- 
mons. The contest was closed and 
the prize awarded to me Jan. 6th, 1902. 



YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN 
ASSOCIATION. 




HIS is in many respects one of 
T America's greatest institutions. 
A membership card in the Young 
Men's Christian Association gives a 
young man entre to all its grand 
privileges in every city in the United 
States, Mexico, and Canada, where it is 
organized. 

There is not another organization in 
the world to-day that returns so much 
to its members for the money, as the 
Young Men's Christian Association. 

It emphasizes the greatness and 

(30) 



YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. 3 I 

strength that lies in co-operation, It 
deals with the young man as a man, 
altogether regardless of his religious 
convictions, It says, as the great Bra- 
mah said, "He whosoever worships, 
worships me, and is welcome to my 
benediction." It teaches a physical as 
well as a theological religion. 

The Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation has done more than all other 
agencies in America combined to 
change the strong boy and the 
athlete from the prize-fighter to the 
business man. — It has made muscle 
respectable. In all probability it 
comes nearer teaching real religion 
than any creed or sectarian organiza- 
tion in the world. It rests, and has 
grown to greatness, upon the thesis 
that, contributing to the happiness and 



FIG. 2. 

Assume position as in Figure 1. 
Tense the muscles and slowly press 
the hands to the top of the shoulders 
and return to position. 

This movement should be taken as 
if lifting up and pushing down a heavy 
weight. 

Inhale deeply as the hands are 
raised — exhale as they are lowered. 






3 




YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. 35 

health of our fellow man is the greatest 
work that hands and brains can find 
to do. 

There are sermons in every bath, 
and every form of exercise, that thou- 
sands of well meaning citizens might 
greatly profit by. It has done more 
to teach the religion of health and care 
of the human body than any co-opera- 
tive organization in existence. A 
healthy man is usually a man of good 
morals. 

The finest lecture I ever heard, — the 
one that gave me my first definition of 
real religion, I heard delivered by a 
young man in an Association hall one 
Sunday afternoon. He was not bur- 
dened with a college education. He 
had not had the misfortune to have his 
mind stuffed with the sayings of 



36 PERFECT HEALTH. 

others. He had not been guided and 
governed in his thoughts by the ready 
made and hand me down opinions of 
men who had been dust many cen- 
turies. He was just a plain sensible 
young fellow, from the great ranks of 
the middle classes. But he knew 
things and he knew them from experi- 
ence. 

He had heart, sympathy, soul and 
sense. He said in the course of his 
remarks, "I believe in energy, vim and 
muscle, but it should be cultivated and 
conserved, not for the purpose of 
pounding the face off your fellow man 
to satisfy and cultivate the anthropoidal 
nnd savage instincts of human beings, 
but to contribute happiness and health 
to the old, so as to make it possible for 
the brain of advanced age to become 



YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. 37 

a vast store house of experience upon 
which younger men might draw." 

This kindled within me an inspira- 
tion for physical development, and 
threw around human health a halo I 
had never seen before. 

Personally, I owe much to the 
Young Men's Christian Association. 
I stand in its presence with uncovered 
head, and bend the knee of my rever- 
ence to its precepts and teachings. 



vP(T*0^ 



j>° 



FIG. 3. 

From this position press the arms 
slowly up to level with shoulders as in 
Figure 1, tensing the muscles and 
stretching the arms to their utmost 
limit as if lifting and pushing down a 
weight. 

Inhale with the ascending and ex- 
hale with the descending motion. 



THE HUMAN BODY. 

JP^ WORD spoken by one person, 
^M a mere sound sent through 
the air, enters the ear and is registered 
on the brain of another that causes the 
heart to leap — the blood to surge and 
rush like a torrent through the veins, 
— the miles of nerves and muscles and 
the millions of living cells to tremble 
and quiver like the leaf of an aspen. 

The eye rests for a moment on a 
face a block away, and we are thrilled 
with emotions of joy or fear, — love or 
hate. Why is this so? — Who knows? 
It is here that science and learning halt 
and from the domain of the unknown 

(4i) 



42 PERFECT HEALTH. 

is echoed back the answer — "Who 
knows ?" 

We look at night into the wilderness 
of worlds, and are bewildered that the 
imagination can find no rest, — no end. 
— We are awed by the thought that 
were we to stand on the farthest star, 
it would be in the abyss of space as 
though we had not moved. 

A stranger thing still, is the human 
body. An atom in space, — a mere 
molecule of matter, — held to the earth 
by a force we call gravity, that moves 
and utters sounds that can be under- 
stood, that thinks, — that anticipates 
things to come,— and that remembers 
things that were, and that struggles 
with another atom for place, su- 
premacy and power. 

As little, — as infinitesimally small as 



THE HUMAN BODY. 43 

this is, it like the Sun, satellites and 
the world above it, is governed by 
certain natural laws, which it has 
learned to disobey and by which name 
it is pleased to call civilization, — which 
in its last analysis means, the knowing 
and doing of things that are of value. 
When the human body measures itself 
by this scale, it finds that it is not yet 
civilized, — that it is groping in the 
night, — but in the direction of the 
morn. 

Think of a human being conscious 
of the fact that it possesses a brain, — a 
strange and curious thing, — composed 
of over three billion neurons, or nerve 
cells, upon which it must depend for 
place, position and daily bread, — in 
short, for its happiness. Suppose it 
were conscious that by study, — learn- 




The illustrations shown in this work 
are intended to serve two distinct pur- 
poses. 

First, the movements and exercises 
necessary to cultivate and bring the 
body to its highest degree of develop- 
ment. 

Second, to show a human figure 
built up by this system from an un- 
healthy and emaciated condition, to a 
state of development pronounced by a 
jury of the highest authorities in 
America to be absolutely perfect. 

The picture on the opposite page 
represents the author in a state of re- 
pose and according to Grecian models 
and measurements is symmetrically 
faultless. 



THE HUMAN BODY. 47 

ing and labor, it was possible to in- 
crease the size of certain brain cells 
10,000 times, but instead it soaked this 
magnificent creation with tobacco, rum 
and Narcotics. Would we regard it 
as civilized ? 

Think of a being with more than 
600 nerves, that carry messages every 
moment to and from this brain, taking 
a strong stimulant, the effect of which 
can only be to deaden and dethrone it. 

Think of a human being with over 
700,000,000 air holes in their lungs 
needing to be filled with new air every 
moment, never filling more than a third 
of them, and the air not owned by the 
Trust. Suppose a man knew that he 
had a million fibres in the sight nerve 
alone, and that tobacco would deaden 
and destroy them by the thousand. 



48 PERFECT HEALTH. 

Would he be considered as repre- 
senting a very high degree of in- 
telligence and civilization, when he 
persisted in its use? 

Suppose people knew and could 
realize that in the blood of a normal 
sized body, there were twenty-two bil- 
lion red corpuscles, and over fifty mil- 
lion white ones, and that these atoms 
of energy were traversing every part 
of the body, day and night, as fast as 
they could, in their effort to keep it 
strong, muscular and healthy, and that 
every particle of bad food they ate, — 
that every drink of rum, beer, or any 
other stimulant or narcotic they took, 
and that every breath of impure air 
they breathed, had the effect of defeat- 
ing the magnanimous purpose of these 
millions of little workers, until thev 



THE HUMAN BODY. 49 

were thoroughly disorganized — until 
by their own ignorance or wilful dis- 
regard of these wants they had laid 
upon them the stupifying load of their 
own perverted appetites, until they, 
instead of rushing through the body 
like a band of cheerful, healthy, well- 
fed workmen, sluggishly marched on 
an aimless errand, knowing full well 
that when they called for bread they 
would be given a stone. 

What would you think of the being 
in whose body this internecene war 
was waged? 



THE STRONG MAN. 




HE Olympian games developed 
in all probability the most per- 
fect specimens of manhood the world 
has ever seen. A symmetrical and 
beautiful human body was worthy the 
chisel and the brush of the masters, 
and the portrayal of the human form 
lifted Greece to the highest pinnacle of 
Art, but the history of the race shows 
that the strong man appeared next be- 
fore the footlights, and doing " stunts" 
for money became a profession. 

This misfortune has reached into 
the present century. The strong man 

has taken the place of the Olympian 

(50) 



THE STRONG MAN. 5 1 

Greek. He cultivates muscle with 
which he can lift enormous loads, but 
this abnormal strength does not prove 
him to be healthy. We have for ex- 
ample Jack Kennedy, the champion 
strong man, and Prof. Dowd, the well 
known physical culturist and weight 
lifter, and many others, who died at an 
early age of internal disorders. 

The majority of athletes are over- 
developed in some special muscles, 
which prey upon the vital organs by 
their abnormality. There is therefore 
a striking difference between the 
strong man and the healthy man. 
Perfect health means a perfectly de- 
veloped body inside and out. You 
can no more have great knotty muscles 
standing up on the arms and back and 
be agile and natural than you can be 



FIG. 4. 

Outstretch the arms to the front as 
far as possible, tensing and pressing 
them to the rear as in Figure 1, in- 
haling as the arms are forced back- 
ward and exhaling as they are brought 
forward. 

This exercise can also be taken 
with a rapid motion, inhaling and ex- 
haling with every two or three move- 
ments. 




if v 



^%€^ 



THE STRONG MAN. 55 

free from pain with a swollen limb or 
distorted liver. 

The healthy man or woman is the 
one who carefully observes the natural 
laws of ventilation, circulation, eating 
and bathing, and carefully cultivates 
each part of the physique with no 
other object in view except to make 
them perform in the highest possible 
degree the functions for which Nature 
intended them. 




DRUGS, 

E practice of giving people 
^ remedies for pain and all kinds 
of ills, rests upon a theory that was 
born in the bed of an ancient super- 
stition, namely, that human ills were a 
punishment sent upon people by the 
Gods, and that the spell could be 
broken by incantations, and that the 
Devils that were in the system— that 
were causing the trouble could be 
coaxed, scared or driven out by 
taking into the stomach some nasty 
tasting drug or herb. And the effort 
among the M. D's— the learned pro- 
fession for many centuries was to get 

(56) 



DRUGS. 57 

something so nasty, bitter and bad, 
that the devils could not stand, hence 
they would vacate the premises. 

Suppose the man in charge of a 
complicated machine, like a great Hoe 
printing press, should pursue the same 
plan with his machine that the doctors 
pursue with the human machine — 
when it got out of order he would go to 
the grease barrel, perhaps, and mix up 
a compound of crude oil, brass and 
steel filings, and pour them into this 
splendid machine. But the mechanic 
knows too much to do this. He care- 
fully notes the place where the trouble 
first shows itself, he looks into the 
next part of the machinery that is 
turned or affected by this one, and he 
traces along from wheel to wheel, — 
cylinder to cylinder, until he locates 



58 PERFECT HEALTH. 

the trouble and he fixes it, and the 
great machine starts and runs again 
and does its work with almost human 
intelligence. 

The man with the machine knows 
that the law of mechanics has in some 
way been violated. He knows that 
the only way to adjust his machine is 
to make it obey that law. The drug 
doctor don't know this. He is still 
practicing the childish superstition that 
marked the era of the dark and middle 
ages. Every dose of medicine is a 
guess. The opinion of a doctor is 
about as uncertain as was the woman's 
in Maine who was asked by a neighbor 
where her husband was. She replied 
u If the ice is as thick as he thinks it is, 
he is skating — if it is as thin as I think 
it is, he is swimming. 



■■&• 



DRUGS. 59 

I am not blessed with the honor of 
three score years, neither have I at- 
tached to my name, "A. M.,D.D. f M. 
D.", or any of those ornaments that I 
fear hang heavily at times upon the 
mentality of men, but I do know that 
unto every law there is a penalty fixed 
for its violation that must be paid. 
The demand for settlement may not 
be made to-day, to-morrow, nor this 
year, but that Nature will call for her 
trial balance sooner or later is as cer- 
tain as the law of gravity. 

The practice of medicine, i. e., giving 
drugs is an endeavor to remedy ills 
without compelling obedience to 
natural law. Take the simplest and 
most common disorder, constipation. 
Ninety- nine per cent, of this trouble 
comes from over-eating and sedentary 



FIG. 5. 



Illustrates the first position for ex- 
ercise shown in Figures 5 and 6. 

Outstretch arms and bend body 
from waist line forward as far as 
possible. Then bend backward to 
position shown in Figure 6. 



---^ ; !)r i - 



DRUGS. 63 

habits. The doctor would remedy it 
with pills. I would remedy it by 
obeying the law of motion (exercise), 
and limiting the amount of fbod to the 
natural demands of the system. The 
pill would cure you for a day, and 
leave you worse than before. The 
other remedy would cure you perma- 
nently and build your body to its 
natural and normal condition besides. 

Of all the strange superstitions that 
people yet cling to, there is probably 
not one so ruinous to the physical, 
mental, and even the moral condition 
of people as the habit of taking some- 
thing for every ill. It is the same old 
scheme of trying to get something for 
nothing. If you have violated some 
law, and Nature imposes pain as a 
penalty, and you succeed in defeating 



64 PERFECT HEALTH. 

it with a drug, you cannot escape, you 
will be caught, and punished for two 
crimes instead of one. 

It is amazing to think of the 
measures to which the makers of 
Patent medicines will go in order to 
exploit their stuff. 

Truth, integrity and honor are 
brutishly crushed beneath the selfish 
and fickle feet of forgery and falsehood, 
that weakened sick and suffering 
People may be induced to buy their 
worthless nostrums. 

On Nov. 25th, 1902, there was a 
letter published in one of New York's 
great Daily Papers, supplemented by 
my picture, alleged to have been from 
me. This letter stated that I had 
been cured by a nostrum called 
" Catarrh Tablets." The whole 



DRUGS. 65 

thing was a forgery and a falsehood 
so mean that I feel disgraced to even 
deny it. I have received hundreds of 
letters from good people all over the 
country asking if it were true that I 
was cured by this alleged remedy. I 
have been much injured and falsely 
represented by this advertisement, as 
I have publicly stated on many occa- 
sions that I oppose medicine in all 
its forms. My own experience has 
taught me that as a remedial agent 
medicine, and especially Patent medi- 
cine, is absolutely worthless. 

It seems unfortunate indeed, that 
there is no redress for one who has 
been thus falsely quoted. It is a stain 
upon society and the fair escutcheon 
of this nation when one man can use 
the picture of another, and forge his 



FIG. 6. 

This shows the complete movement 
as begun in Fig. 5. 

This exercise should be taken slow- 
ly, inhaling with the backward and 
exhaling with the forward movement. 
It can also be taken rapidly inhaling 
and exhaling with each complete 
movement. 

The daily practice of this exercise 
will lend to the body much grace and 
give it the suppleness necessary to 
accomplish this movement with ease. 



DRUGS. 69 

name to a public and lying document, 
and thereby profit and speculate upon 
the fact that the man thus falsely 
represented had achieved some honest 
notoriety as a healthy specimen of 
manhood. 




NARCOTICS. 

VERY minister and moralist in 
the country has more or less to 
say about intemperance, which is usu- 
ally confined to the drinking of alco- 
holic liquors. Their appeal is made 
from a moral stand-point, first, that it 
is sinful to take intoxicants, and second, 
that it is harmful to others whose 
happiness depends upon the conduct of 
the drinker. To all of this I subscribe 
most heartily, but I wish to add that 
they do not treat the subject fairly. 
The taking of narcotics, of which 

alcohol is only one, is the most far- 

(70) 



NARCOTICS. 71 

reaching and baneful habit, and more 
destructive in its effect upon the 
physical man than all other forms ot 
dissipation combined. It would be 
impossible in a volume of this size to 
describe in the remotest degree the 
effect upon the human system of the 
Four great stimulants, viz., tea, coffee, 
tobacco, and liquor, which are used 
daily by a majority of all so-called 
civilized people. 

My first ill health, which I refer to 
in my Personal Experience chapter, I 
attribute directly to the use of coffee, 
tobacco, and drugs, and I am prepared 
to say, most emphatically, that good 
health and a physical development 
worth the name, is absolutely impos- 
sible so long as these narcotics are 
used. 



FIG. 7. 



This presents the first position of 
exercise completed in Fig. 8. 

Keep the heels together and stretch 
the arms to their utmost height, clasp- 
ing the fingers and holding the arms 
and body rigid — then bend from side 
to side as shown in Figure 8, 



J 



3 




0^. 



^ 



NARCOTICS. '75 

It is at this point in our inquiry that 
the doctor may be mentioned. I don't 
mean the L L.D., or the D.D., but I 
mean the M. D., the little man with 
premature whiskers, or the big one 
with the large stomach, who goes about 
with pink pills and a wise look, charg- 
ing misguided people large fees for the 
attempt to cure them of ills brought on 
by their own misconduct and igno- 
rance. 

This class of men have been the 
custodians of the people's health for 
many centuries. They have had laws 
passed to make it criminal for other 
people who did not have these letters 
hanging to their names to practice the 
science of curing, with what results we 
all know too well. 

There is one strange thing about 



76 PERFECT HEALTH. 

people. If they get sick and have a 
doctor, they credit him with their re- 
covery. But if they get sick and have 
no doctor, and get well, they give Na- 
ture no credit for her work. They 
say, "I guess there wasn't much the 
matter any way." 

I was for several years a victim of 
the doctor and patent medicine habit, 
and all my earnings went into the 
coffers of their ignorance, and I can 
attest with truth and emphasis that they 
contributed not one iota of benefit to 
me. They never gave me one hint of 
advice that could in the remotest way 
have guided me to health. But on the 
contrary, the drugs, nostrums and 
compounds, with large Latin names 
that they administered to me, did me 
an infinite amount of harm. — They 



NARCOTICS. 77 

held me in mental bondage- — Intel- 
lectual slavery — and experimental 
servitude. 

In this connection, I wish to say 
however, that there are some grand 
men in the medical profession, men 
who are students, thinkers and doers 
of good, but the great majority of 
doctors are educated in an atmosphere 
of medicine, drugs, and alleged reme- 
dies. They are taught in their schools 
and lectures that for every ill there is a 
medicine that will cure. When a hu- 
man ill appears, instead of searching 
Nature for a violated law, they flee to 
the fetid swamp of drugs. This pro- 
cedure is perfectly natural. Their 
minds are wholly absorbed with the 
theory of drugs, — it is their only 
storehouse of remedy, and they go to 



78 PERFECT HEALTH. 

it for all cures — they tread on in the 
dusty shoes of the dead. 

They seem to have never thought 
that ill health was a false and unnatural 
condition, and if one possessed sickness 
instead of health, it was because they 
had • been disobeying the laws that 
govern health, and that they could 
compel its return by seeking out the 
violated law and bending the knee of 
their obedience to it. — There is nothing 
more natural and certain than this. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, 
"If all drug doctors and drug stores 
were cast into the sea, it would be all 
the better for humanity and worse for 
the fish." It is absolutely pathetic to 
see the faith people place in drugs and 
doctors. 

A long, lank, countryman, entered a 



NARCOTICS. 79 

doctor's office in a small Missouri town, 
and said, " Doctor, i'm a feelin purty 
bad. Can't you give me sumthin 
that'l help me?" The doctor looked 
him over and propounded the usual 
old questions about, " What do you 
eat? How is your tongue? etc." He 
could see nothing the matter with his 
visitor, so he said, "You must eat more 
animal food. You need blood." The 
man departed, but returned in a week, 
looking somewhat improved, though 
not satisfied. The doctor inquired, 
"How r do you feel?" "Purty tough, 
Doc," the patient answered. "Did 
you eat what I told you?" asked the 
doctor. "Not all of it. I tell ye, 
Doc," said the long man, "I could eat 
the corn and oats purty well, but I'll 
be durned if I could go that hay." 



The picture on the opposite page is 
a classic pose intended to show the 
action of all the muscles above the 
waist during violent effort or excite- 
ment, while the lower limbs are held 
natural or in a state of repose. 



NARCOTICS. 83 

People seem to think that doctors 
have some mysterious knowledge that 
can penetrate to their very inmost 
frames. They forget that doctors are 
only men, — that nearly all they know 
is from books, — that books were 
written by other men, — that these 
other men might have got their infor- 
mation from other books, and so on, 
back to the age of casting out devils, 
and also that medicine and its practice 
can be traced back to a very super- 
stitious age. 

The practice of medicine to-day is 
not a science, it is a trade. Science 
knows. = — Medicine guesses. The rea- 
son why the drug doctor should oc- 
cupy a conspicuous place in this chapter 
is because it is safe to say that a large 
majority of the opium, cocaine, and 



84 PERFECT HEALTH. 

morphine fiends are first given these 
powerful narcotics by some doctor. I 
am, however, an optimist on the sub- 
ject of the doctor. The drug store and 
the drug doctor are passing. Every 
athlete, — every line of literature on the 
subject of physical training, — the great 
work of the Young Men's Christian 
Association, are all pall-bearers for the 
drug store and drug doctor, and with 
the passing of the drug habit, the drug 
doctor will cease to be. 

The future doctor will be a teacher,— 
a naturalist. The first evidence of his 
ability and qualifications to teach, will 
be his own physical condition. Think 
of a weak, scrawnv, undeveloped man, 
or a large, fat, over-fed individual, ad- 
dicted to the use of tobacco, coffee, tea 
and liquor, having the supernal gall to 



NARCOTICS, 85 

call themselves doctors, — teachers and 
instructors or keepers of the health, — 
that most coveted and priceless pos- 
session that exists between the cradle 
and the coffin, A doctor should be 
forbidden by law to practice, who 
could not first show himself to be free 
from the use of narcotics, and to pos- 
sess perfect physical health. If a 
doctor has ill health, it is certainly be- 
cause he either does not w r ant good 
health or does not know how to attain 
it, which in either case should dis- 
qualify him absolutely as a keeper of 
the health of others. 

It looks incredible that a young 
man or woman who should know the 
value of health, and a fine physical 
stature, w r ould take into their system 
such stuff as liquor, tobacco, tea, coffee 



86 PERFECT HEALTH. 

and drugs, whose only effect is to tear 
down and destroy muscular and nerv- 
ous energy. Were he to see some 
mechanics engaged in constructing a 
beautiful building, and others en- 
gaged in tearing it down, we would 
think the architect of the building was 
a fool. Yet this is exactly what he 
orders done in his own system, when 
he eats good food, breathes good air, 
and practices exercise, all of which 
builds and constructs, and at the same 
time, takes these narcotics, which de- 
molishes and destroys. 

If a young man or woman could be 
made to realize the awful effect of nar- 
cotics on the delicate machinery of the 
human anatomy, they might well stand 
aghast. The brain is a vast central 
office, and every nerve in the body is 



NARCOTICS, 87 

a wire running to it. There are about 
three billion nerve cells in the brain and 
spinal cordc Every atom of narcotics 
taken into the system, first stimulates, 
and then destroys these delicate cells. 
The effects of narcotics upon the 
sight and hearing is probably the most 
marked and pronounced. There is an 
organ in the inner ear, shaped like a 
triangle, called the organ of "Corti," 
named for the man who discovered it, 
that is so small it cannot be seen with 
the natural eye. Yet the microscope 
reveals the fact that this little hearing 
instrument contains nine thousand pil- 
lars, so to speak. They are spiral in 
shape, and are so united at the top as 
to form a row of arches. They are 
composed of about fifteen thousand 
cells, called hair cells. In this wonder- 



•JOsJ^* 




FIG. 8. 

To derive most benefit from this 
movement, deep breathing should be 
practiced — inhaling as the body moves 
toward the right, and exhaling when 
bending to the left. 

Care should be taken to keep the 
head resting on the lower arm with 
each movement. 



NARCOTICS. 91 

ful instrument, each little cell is in 
touch with the delicate end of a nerve 
fibre. All these nerve-fibres converge 
together in the hearing nerve. The 
hearing nerve carries the sounds into 
the brain, where they are analyzed and 
understood. 

All the sounds ever heard must pass 
through this tiny machine, — the hoarse 
roar of the cannon, — the faintest 
whisper of the winds, and the softest 
breath of love, — of such delicate and 
mysterious things is the human body 
composed. Is it not, therefore, a 
sacrilege to stultify and load these 
wonderful parts of the human machine 
with narcotics and poisonous drugs ? 
It was once said by a great author 
that men never think unless they are 
shocked or knocked 'into it. I can only 



92 PERFECT HEALTH, 

hope to cause you to think. Not long 
since, I was in company with a man of 
many millions. He was unhealthy 
and unhappy. I was happy and 
healthy. I realized as never before 
the value of health, which can only be 
purchased by an obedience to Nature's 
inexorable laws. 




WOMEN. 

E Author of " Locksley Hall" 
'?*" instead of saying "As the hus- 
band is, the wife is" — might well 
have said, "As the mother is, the 
race is." 

I hope the ladies will pardon me for 
presuming to tell them anything, espe- 
cially about themselves, but — well any 
how — it is not because I am not satis- 
fied with them, I have no notion of 
trying to live in a tub like an ancient 
Grecian philosopher once did, but I am 
daring to write this chapter because I 
want to contribute my little mite 

(93) 



FIG. A. 

Figure A shows an exercise espe- 
cially recommended for Rheumatism 
and circulation in the lower limbs. 
Rise upon the toes, resting weight of 
body upon the balls of the feet through- 
out the full movement. Lower the 
body slowly to a squatting position. 
Then rise to full height, inhaling 
deeply when arising and exhale 'while 
descending. 



WOMEN. 97 

toward making them even more beau- 
tiful. 

A thousand years from now women 
may have learned to depend more 
upon the natural than the artificial for 
attraction, It has been the custom for 
ages for women to wear ornaments, — 
to strive in every conceivable way to 
add to their charms and powers of at- 
traction. All of this I subscribe to 
most heartily. Diamonds, silks, feath- 
ers, point lace, and lace without points, 
all roiled into one, are none too beauti- 
ful to suit me. 

The modest protest that I want to 
make is, that sometimes the girls — 
even those who have got past the habit 
of being girls, do undertake to make 
themselves beautiful at the expense of 
health, vim and vivacity. 



98 PERFECT HEALTH. 

I don't like the corset because I 
know it is a villianous krupp instru- 
ment, loaded to kill, pointed &i future 
generations. I don't like the long 
skirt because it makes you one handed, 
and I need them both. I want to hold 
on to one and tell off the little pig story 
on the other. 

I weep to see some French fakir 
bambozle you out of your Ryksdaal- 
ders with a bottle of red oak ooze and 
cochineal while I am just dying for a 
job as face masseur. Like Elija, I feel 
that I do well to wail at your weak- 
ness, but not until you encase yourself 
in a gas pipe and put on a flowing 
train of sackcloth and paint your faces 
like barber poles will I cease to bend 
to you the knee of my homage and 
journey to your shrine, and even then 



WOMEN. 99 

I might be found with a pair of sheep- 
shears, a scrubbing brush and a kit of 
burglar tools, in the flowing tails of 
my ulster. 

If I were a girl just eighteen, and 
had succeeded in withstanding my first 
attack of the he-he's, I would go out 
and sit me quietly down beneath the 
shade of the apple tree and think it all 
seriously over, something after this 
fashion. It isn't all of life to be beau- 
tiful, and if it were, of what does 
beauty consist, what are the fleeting, 
fading, changing iridescent atoms that 
compose it. 

Here I would stop — and milk the 
cow, do up the dishes and go and ask 
some very old woman and some aged 
sage of what does beauty consist, and 
I would sum it all up, and go at it 




FIG. B. 

Hold the body rigid, resting upon 
toes and elbows, elevating the body 
at the waist line as high as possible, 
then lowering until the abdomen 
touches the floor. This movement is 
especially good for strengthening the 
lower spine and Pelvic organs. 



WOMEN. IO3 

again next day, and I would probably 
decide that beauty as applied to women 
meant vim, muscle, strength, energy, 
vigor, development, in short it meant 
health and that the best definition of 
health was a perfectly developed body, 
inside and out, then I would begin at 
the very bottom of the whole question 
of health, culture and physical training 
— I would remember that woman's 
greatest attraction is that something 
that radiates from a healthy, vigorous 
body, which we are pleased to call 
magnetism for want of a better name 
— I would also remember that if I was 
not a perfectly developed woman, that 
it was my own fault, and that by a 
little scientific thinking and working 
each day (one hour — one 24th of my 
time) that this most valuable and 



104 PERFECT HEALTH. 

coveted prize could be won, I would 
then try and put a price on it. 

By this method I would try and as- 
certain what this one hour a day thus 
devoted was worth. We will say for 
illustration, that the prize was worth a 
billion dollars and in two years' time I 
could attain a perfectly developed phy- 
sique, try and figure out how much 
you woul-d make each hour, and if I 
had failed to make it, I would figure 
that it was equivalent to having lost 
that amount, I would extend the cal- 
culation on through the years up to 
thirty, forty or even fifty, I would re- 
member that the average woman fades 
in physique, health and attraction at 
thirty-five. I would ask myself seri- 
ously is this a natural condition, has 
Mother Nature placed upon the earth 



WOMEN. I05 

human beings upon which depends the 
perpetuity of the race, — upon which 
rests all that is to be, mental, physical 
and spiritual of mankind and yet been 
to her so unfair and unjust? 

I think then I would decide that 
destiny had not so decreed, and that 
this condition was a penalty paid for 
violation of natural law, I would turn 
then about face and find that law and 
obey it, if I had to miss all the ice 
cream festivals and foot ball games for 
five seasons. 

It is said that a man without senti- 
ment is like a violin without a string. 
If man has inherited this trait that has 
softened and civilized his natural sav- 
agery, it came from woman. The 
difference between the Inquisition of 
the dark ages and the Young Worn- 



106 PERFECT HEALTH. 

en's Christian Association of to-day in 
its last analysis is nothing but the dif- 
ference in sentiment or the sympathetic 
feeling of one person for another that 
has been given to the world through 
ten centuries of women's tears. 

The sacrifice that is daily made by 
women in great cities, I have had 
some opportunity to learn, I have seen 
some strange force lead young and 
beautiful women to silently pass the 
flowers by in the very spring-time of 
life, — to leave the apples of Hesperides 
and share dead sea fruit with humanity 
below them, I have seen them go from 
the garden of life where the birds were 
singing to their mates, where the bee, 
honey-laden homeward flies, where all 
life seemed fulfilling the promise of 
youthful dreams, where hope, that 



WOMEN. 107 

strange occult power that thrills the 
heart and sends the blood like molten 
rubies flying through the veins. 

I have seen them go into that wasp 
nest of strife — to the destitute, the 
fallen, — to the slums, to the brothel, — 
to that rolling seething sea, that inferno 
of degradation where depravity and 
despair hold carnaval at night's high 
noon : and take in their pure white 
hands, the palms of the fallen and 
wretched and with words soft and 
sweet, create and impart that hope 
which through all the ages has light- 
ened the load of sorrow and set the 
star of hope in the evening of life. 

I know not what power it is that 
causes women to sympathetically lift a 
human being, stained with the slime of 
the gutter and endeavor to plant in 




FIG. C. 

Elevate the arms to full height with 
palms turned in. Turn toes together, 
which relieves the strain that may fall 
upon the kidneys. Bending as far as 
possible from side to side. 

This exercise practiced daily will 
strengthen and develop the muscles 
of the sides, v/hich are so seldom used 
in ordinary daily duties. It will also 
give to the waist lines a beautiful and 
natural contour. It is an excellent 
remedy for Lumbago. 



>c^sc 



WOMEN. I I I 

their rum-soaked brains the seeds of 
hope, of life and reform. I say I know 
not what power it is that impels on- 
ward these things, but I do know that 
the human mind, with all its vast pos- 
sibilities — that the imagination in its 
flight into the infinite abyss of space, 
— that the soul with all its affection, 
love and measureless aspirations, — that 
the human heart bubbling over with 
its purest and noblest emotions have 
altogether never conceived of a greater 
act than women silently and lovingly 
laboring for the physical, moral and 
intellectual uplifting of their race. 




DIET. 

E question of what to eat and 
't' what not to eat, has been a sub- 
ject of discussion so long in the athletic 
world, that it would seem that some 
perfect diet would have been agreed 
upon. But while the athletes and pro- 
fessors of hygiene are studying what 
is best to eat, the chef is studying what 
will please the palate most. 

There is constant war between the 
appetite and common sense. There is 
quite a difference between appetite and 
hunger. Appetite is a call made by 
perverted Nature for something with 

(112) 



DIET. 113 

which to fill up the stomach. Hunger 
is a call made by nature to replace tis- 
sue that has been wasted in effort. 
Appetite is in the stomach. — Hunger is 
felt in the mouth and throat. Appetite 
feeds and gormandizes, — hunger eats 
and enjoys. Appetite only wants 
quantity. — Hunger designates quality. 
Appetite is what leads the drinker to 
his loss. — Hunger points to that most 
needed, and when satisfied, cries, 
enough. 

A man from Kentucky who was 
under my care while I was Physical 
Director at the Nature Home in Ulster 
Park, N. Y., who was put on a simple 
diet of whole wheat bread, eggs and 
milk, said, " I'll tell ye, young man, I 
don't like your eatin much, up here, but 
I used to be in Heaven three hours 



114 PERFECT HEALTH. 

out of every twenty-four, and in Hell 
twenty-one. But now I'm in Hell 
only two hours, and in Heaven the 
other twenty-two, so I reckon I'd bet- 
ter stand it a while longer." 

The reason that hygienic doctors 
and athletes will never agree on an 
universal health bill of fare, is because 
heredity and environment have made 
and bred people so vastly different that 
a fixed diet becomes impossible. All 
therefore, that I feel qualified to say on 
this question is, that each individual 
must select for himself, first an agree- 
able diet, and second, a limitation upon 
quantity. There are, however, a few 
fundamental rules that underlie the 
whole question of food. 

Every one should know the chemi- 
cal properties of the leading articles of 



DIET. 115 

diet. They should also know what to 
eat, and what not to eat with these ar- 
ticles at the same meal, so as to avoid 
bad combinations of food, which is the 
direct cause of nearly all stomach dis- 
orders. 

The following story comes from 
Chicago. I do not say it is true — but 
strange things do happen in Cook 
County, 111. In order to ascertain the 
variety and number of things the aver- 
age man puts into his stomach daily, a 
certain health food " crank/' armed 
himself with a large glass jar with an 
air tight top and proceeded hard by the 
shadow of an all around Chicago busi- 
ness man. He deposited in this recep- 
ticle a small portion of everything his 
companion ate, drank, chewed or 
smoked during the day. 



<?** 



FIG. D. 

This position is easily acquired 
after a few trials. Kick the legs up 
and down as in bicycling. This move- 
ment practiced night and morning will 
reduce the size of the abdomen and 
give great relief to many ills with 
which women are so often afflicted. 
It also has a direct tendency towards 
the relief of constipation. 



k 



DIET. 119 

Without regard to time the combi- 
nation that went into the jar was as 
follows : — Ice water, apple, grape fruit, 
oatmeal, cream, toast, butter, salt, 

buckwheat cakes, syrup, tobacco, 

whiskey, seltzer, tobacco, sausage, 

chees slaw, vinegar bread, oysters, 

soup, celery, salt, apple sauce, veal, 
tobasco, Worcestershire, potato, pep- 
per, butter, beans, vinegar, catsup, 
coffee, sugar, cream, ice cream, cake, 

cheese, tobacco, a tablet, beer, 

sourkraut, pig's knuckles, rye bread, 
slaw, pickles, onions, ham, mustard, 
anchavois, cavia, herring, bologna, 
cheese, beer, bicarbonate soda, water, 

whiskey. At 4.15 P. M. the glass 

jar exploded with an awful report. 
The business man was knocked 
through two pairs of swinging doors, 



120 PERFECT HEALTH. 

while the crank was blown to frag- 
ments. Science and the vegetarian 
society was therefore deprived of the 
result they expected from the experi- 
ment. 

Mr. Carnegie it is said has offered 
in the interest of science to have a ves- 
sel built at Bethlehem, Pa., that will 
stand the test, but up to the present 
time has been unable to secure the 
" business man" or the " crank" to 
risk the experiment. 

If the proper combinations of foods 
were observed, there would be no 
such thing as abnormal appetite, and 
if this in turn could be abolished the 
great question of over-feeding would 
be solved. 

The most eminent doctor in France 
once said, " If fermentation in the 



DIET. 121 

stomach could be prevented, man 
might live on indefinitely.'' This may 
or may not be true. But it undoubt- 
edly is true that nearly all human ills 
have their origin in the stomach, and 
the Genesis of this origin begins with 
fermentation of foods. 

Pliny, the elder, said that the oven 
and frying pan had done more harm to 
the human race than war, pestilence 
and famine. I have come to believe 
that this ancient philosopher was right. 
There can be no such thing as fermen- 
tation in the stomach if one eats only 
elementary foods, i.e., uncooked foods, 
well masticated. Hence, it should 
be the object of every person pur- 
suing habits of health reform, to eat 
as many uncooked foods as possible. 
It is surprising to know what a rich, 



FIG. E. 

Lie flat on the back with hands at 
sides. Elevate the legs bringing the 
feet as far to the rear of the head as 
possible, and return with a slow and 
continuous motion. Exhale as the 
limbs are being elevated and inhale 
as they return to position. 




Ugv>~~~~ 



% »a- 




DIET. 125 

satisfying taste there is in all elemen- 
tary foods, and when once we accus- 
tom ourselves to the use of them, 
cooked foods become stale and flat. 

A very delightful meal can be served 
without the aid of a cook stove. For 
example, apples, oranges, bananas 
(very ripe), peaches, pears, in fact, all 
ripe fruits and berries in season vege- 
tables, such as lettuce, celery, radishes, 
and onions, nuts of all kinds, even the 
lowly peanut is one of the best and 
most nutritious of foods, To this can 
be added dates, seeded raisins and figs, 
which eaten with ripe bananas and 
cream makes a most palatable and nu- 
tritious dessert. 

When fruits are out of season, the 
table can be provided with evaporated 
peaches, pears, prunes and apricots, 



126 PERFECT HEALTH. 

which if soaked over night in warm 
water, will be found to be a most 
delightful dish. Cabbage, which is 
known as a very indigestible food, can 
be eaten raw with perfect safety, and 
with nuts of any kind, if masticated 
thoroughly, becomes very sweet and 
one of the most tasteful in the vegeta- 
ble kingdom. 

Two raw eggs, dropped into a quart 
of milk, and thoroughly beaten to- 
gether, is sufficient for and makes a 
most nutritious meal, but a glass of 
this can be taken with an ordinary 
meal to much advantage, but should 
always be sipped in small quantities, 
and not drunk, as is usually the habit. 
A valuable lesson in this thought can 
be had from the nursing infant, or calf 
which if given milk from their mother 



DIET. 127 

in large swallows will create violent 
indigestion and nausea. 

In the effort to improve upon natural 
food, and create mixtures for the epi- 
cure, numberless condiments have been 
made popular. All of these should be 
discarded by anyone desiring a healthy 
diet. They have absolutely no place 
in the hygienic dietary. They are 
most all extremely irritating, and pos- 
sess little or no nutritive value. Their 
only office is to irritate and aid in the 
disastrous process of fermentation. 
Even sugar, the great American lux- 
ury, can be absolutely discarded with 
great benefit to health. It is one of 
the most highly concentrated forms of 
food. Whiskey is harmful because of 
its concentration. Both the cereal and 
the juice of the sugar cane in their 



FIG. F. 

This is the reverse position and 
movement of Fig. 2. Assume a 
tensed or *igid position, bending the 
body up and down from the waist line. 

This strengthens the Pelvic or- 
gans and spine, and gives to the 
shoulders that well developed and 
rounded form that so often has to be 
supplied with padding. 



DIET. 131 

natural forms are harmless, but in the 
form of extracts they work much harm 
to the human stomach. 

Meat eating among the American 
people is almost universal. I am often 
asked, " How can you keep strong 
without meat ? " I sometimes remind 
the questioner that the race horse gets 
along pretty well without steak or 
weiner-wurst. 

A moment's reflection will convince 
any one that there is and can be noth- 
ing in the meat that was not first in 
the plant, except disease. While meat 
may not be injurious to any marked 
degree, it is wholly and entirely unnec- 
essary. In consuming flesh foods, 
you only get the plants and vegetables 
second hand, after thev have been 
through the body of an animal that 



132 PERFECT HEALTH. 

knows nor observes no law of cleanli- 
ness or hygiene. 

Were I selecting for myself the most 
healthful and nutritious diet, based 
upon my own experience and that of 
others, whom I regard as competent 
authorities, it would be about as fol- 
lows : The first or noon meal would 
consist of apples, oranges, bananas, 
whole wheat bread and butter, baked 
sweet or white potatoes, and one other 
cooked vegetable, such as beans, peas, 
or spinach with rice. To this I would 
add a glass of milk mixed with a well- 
beaten egg, a few nuts, dates, or 
seeded raisins. The evening meal 
would consist of about the same arti- 
cles, to which might be added a cream 
or puree soup. 

One mistake most common among 



DIET. 133 

good livers is the combining of food 
varieties that do not agree. While the 
above named articles may not be pala- 
table to many, they will find a healthy 
and hygienic diet by making their own 
selections, taking care not to eat too 
many varieties at the same meal. 

Judging by the average grocery 
store, one would think that people 
lived wholly upon canned goods, 
crackers, and stock foods made by 
machinery. As compared with natu- 
ral foods, these shelf and stock goods 
are wholly unfit for use, or at least un- 
necessary, as they can nearly all be 
obtained in dried or evaporated forms, 
or baked at home. 



OVER-EATING, 

CONSTIPATION 




ESE two subjects are con- 
^ nected for the reason that 
nearly all constipation is the direct re- 
sult of over-eating. It is said by an 
eminent English authority that the 
average man eats eight times the 
quantity of food necessary to sustain 
the body in perfect health. But in 
order to deal fairly with the subject, 
we might presume that the average 
man consumes four times the amount 
of food necessary. 

From my own experience, I am 

(134) 



OVER-EATING— CONSTIPATION. 1 35 

convinced that it is entirely within the 
limits of fact to say that as a class, 
people eat at least twice the quantity 
of food necessary to maintain both 
health and strength in their highest 
possible forms. 

The result of over-eating is so far 
reaching in its effect upon the human 
anatomy that it is almost impossible to 
discuss it in a volume like this, where 
all I can hope to do is to give a skele- 
ton of fundamental truth, most of 
which I have worked out and discov- 
ered in my own life and experience, 
I therefore must depend upon my 
readers to take a hint and work them 
out for themselves, because no amount 
of logic or reasoning will convert an- 
other man. Experience only converts. 
It is the only authority for an opinion. 







FIG. 9. 

This gives the first position of an 
exercise I call " rolling the shoulders," 
which consists in describing a circle 
or wheel, making a hub of the shoul- 
ders and a rim of the hands. 

Stretch the arms down to their full 
tension, bringing them forward to posi- 
tion shown in Figure 10. 



to 



OVER-EATING— CONSTIPATION. 1 39 

A man is never converted until he 
convinces himself, and he never con- 
vinces himself until he tries it, and I 
am sorry to add that as a rule he never 
tries it until he is frightened into it by 
sickness, and even then he flees to all 
the nostrums and drugs with strange 
scholarly names that can be given by 
doctors, and patent fake remedies with 
which drug stores are laden, until they 
all fail, and then if he has any vitality 
or sense left he may decide to obey 
the natural law of eating; (the making 
of the blood) exercise, (its proper dis- 
tribution through the body) breathing, 
(the process of purifying the blood), 
and daily bathing (the cleansing of the 
exterior), and then he gets well, as I 
did, and brings upon his hapless head 
the eternal stigma of "crank," — a 



I40 PERFECT HEALTH. 

word invented by the stupid, as an 
epithet with which to disgrace the 
thinker and the doer. The word 
" crank " in a few decades will be used 
as a title of honor. 

If you want to get an idea of the 
amount of food consumed at a hearty 
meal, surround your plate with the 
same amount of food in a natural or 
raw state that you eat when cooked, 
remembering at the same time that the 
cooking process has not lessened in 
one degree the bulk. It has merely 
removed some of the water and more 
than half its nutritive value and 
changed the starch into dextrine, but 
the cellulose and other bulky fibrous 
matter is in the foods in a more injuri- 
ous form cooked than in the natural 
state. 



OVER-EATING— CONSTIPATION. I4I 

The following are a few fundamental 
rules, if observed daily will cure the 
most obstinate cases of constipation. 

Drink two or three glasses of water, 
either hot or cool, in the morning. 

Drop down upon the back, with the 
knees elevated, and flush the stomach 
by drawing the abdomen up and down 
by a muscular movement. Then if 
possible take a brisk walk of a mile or 
two, or to run is better, treading on the 
balls of the feet. 

Omit breakfast. This is the meal 
that does most of the stomach mischief. 
Spend the time in exercising, bathing 
and breathing, that you would in eat- 
ing this useless meal, and you will go 
from your home thoroughly eauipped 
for the day, and the noon hour will 
find your stomach well rested and 



142 PERFECT HEALTH. 

washed clean from the copious 
draughts of water taken in the morn- 
ing. If you have a tendency toward 
constipation, you should practice 
vigorously exercises Figs. 32 and 33. 

The evening meal should consist of 
as much fruit as possible, omitting the 
use of too many starchy foods, such as 
potatoes, bread, and beans especially 
white bread, which is nearly all starch 
and totally unfit for food. 

A good brisk walk from place of 
business to the home, or a brisk run 
of a mile or so, an hour before retiring, 
is one of the best possible tonics for 
sluggish abdominal action. Before 
retiring practice half an hour with 
energy and vigor the exercises shown 
in figures 32 and 33. 




NO BREAKFAST. 

PPETITE for food is only a 
demand made by Nature for 
the replacing of tissue which has been 
torn down by the exertion of effort. 
Every movement of the body tears 
down some of the millions of cellular 
tissues of which the body is composed. 
Nearly every person, especially that 
class called "good livers," eat a kind 
of food and take a class of beverage 
that is more or less irritating, such as 
pepper, mustard, horse-radish, and 
dozens of other condiments with which 

the average American table is 

(143) 



G 



This pose was selected by the 
artist from the Grecian models and is 
intended to expose a full side and pro- 
file view of the entire body. 

This is a very trying position espe- 
cially to show symmetry and bodily 
perfection. 




NO BREAKFAST. 1 47 

freighted. Meat itself, even without 
condiments or sauce, is a stimulant of 
no mean degree. 

There is absolutely no nutrition in 
beef juice or tea. It was abolished 
from the Austrian army not long since, 
because in the government laboratories 
it was discovered that it was a stimu- 
lant only and possessed no nutritive 
value. Beef tea is simply beef urine. 
All it needed was a little more time. 

In addition to these foods, which in 
themselves are irritating, we put into 
the stomach combinations which pro- 
duce extreme irritation, owing to the 
chemical action of one upon the other. 
The majority of foods upon the daily 
bill of fare such as bread, potatoes and 
beans, is composed largely of starch. 
When this is mixed with cane sugar 



I48 PERFECT HEALTH. 

or fruit acids, immediate fermentation 
is the result. 

The average stomach cannot digest 
combinations of this character quick 
enough to prevent fermentation, and 
when the slightest fermentation occurs 
a false or abnormal appetite is the re- 
sult. This condition is especially fre- 
quent and pronounced in the morning, 
owing to the fact that what is called 
the best meal, — the one containing the 
greatest variety of foods, is usually 
served in the evening. 

When activity ceases and especially 
when we go to sleep, the stomach also 
ceases its work and food not digested 
when we retire remains undigested 
until morning. This accounts for the 
coated tongue, the dark brown taste, 
so often experienced in the morning. 



XO BREAKFAST. 1 49 

A coated tongue is an interesting thing 
when it is understood. The coating is 
composed of millions and millions of 
living animals, who during the night 
have crawled up the throat canal, prob- 
ably foraging around for a cleaner or 
more healthy environment than the 
place of their birth. 

Vinegar and several other kinds of 
acids, brought into contact with starch 
at the normal heat of the body, will 
produce life in six hours. A stomach 
so irritated develops an abnormal 
appetite. This is why a drink of 
alcoholic liquor on an empty stomach 
will sharpen the appetite. 

As stated before, the cause of a 
natural appetite is Nature's request for 
the replacing of tissue that has been 
torn down, or destroyed by exertion, 



FIG. 10. 

From this position elevate the arms 
close to the head, pressing them back- 
ward as far as possible in a circular 
motion to the beginning. 

Inhale while making the upward 
and exhale while making the down- 
ward half of the circle. 




_c 



J^, 




NO BREAKFAST, 1 53 

and since during the night we undergo 
rest instead of exertion, there could be 
nothing in sleep that could produce in 
the slightest degree a natural appetite. 
Sleep is Nature's method of replacing 
tissue, instead of destroying it. Hence 
we should feel stronger in the morning, 
and an appetite should not appear 
until exertion had caused it, and na- 
ture had made its demand for food. 
This is why the best authorities and 
best specimens of physical develop- 
ment all over the world are leaving off 
breakfast. 

In my own case the abolishing of 
breakfast was an accident. After I 
was well on the road toward health 
and able to return to my work, the in- 
creased amount of exercise that I took 
during the evening, produced a long, 



154 PERFECT HEALTH. 

sound, refreshing sleep, which was 
usually indulged in until after the 
breakfast hour, when, for lack of time 
purely, I would hurriedly put together 
a piece of bread and butter which I 
would take to the shop with me and 
eat at the first opportunity, which was 
usually about ten o'clock. 

This had a tendency to destroy my 
appetite for the noon meal. Since I 
had reasoned out the question of ex- 
ercise, and pursued it with such marked 
advantage, I really had courage now 
to think for myself, and refused to be 
governed by alleged doctors who 
couldn't keep themselves well, so I 
began to reason and at the same time 
experiment with omitting breakfast 
entirely. My real recovery dates 
from this time. 



NO BREAKFAST. 1 55 

Having learned how to exercise, 
how to breathe, how to bathe, and 
how to eat, perfect health and the 
highest form of animal energy was 
purely a question of time. 




g V3 




FIG. 11. 

This is what I have named the 
" hoop " exercise. 

It is taken with arms extended as 
shown in figure, and rolled with a 
quick motion, as if the wrists were en- 
circled by a hoop. 

The chest should be well extended 
and the rolling motion far to the rear. 



'"^><£ ^ g/' 




MASTICATION. 

EXT to knowing what to eat, 
the most important thing is to 
know how to eat it. Experience has 
shown me that a great majority of 
people live to mature age and never 
learn how to eat or draw their breath, 
as simple as these things may seem. 

The quick lunch in cities, — the 
twenty-minute railroad eating house, — 
the hurry of the American to get rich, 
have all conspired together to cause 
people to totally disregard the law of 
mastication. Most food is composed 
of millions of globular molecules, 

which are held together by hard sub- 

(159) 



l6o PERFECT HEALTH. 

stances, such as cellulose and other 
tough fibrous matter. 

The enjoyment of food is totally lost 
without thorough mastication. The 
fine sense of taste cannot be touched 
until sufficient saliva has been gen- 
erated by the motion of the jaws to 
begin the work of transforming all 
starch into grape sugar, which is the 
first step toward assimilation. But to 
deprive the taste-buds of their rights 
is the least evil of improper mastica- 
tion. The great mischief follows in 
the stomach. 

Not long ago I dropped into a 14th 
Street, (New York) cafe, for a noon 
lunch. My attention was attracted to 
a gentleman, apparently in a great 
hurry, who seated himself opposite 
me. In just eight minutes from the 



MASTICATION. l6l 

time he was seated he had devoured a 
cut of roast beef, two soggy potatoes, 
a glass of ice water, three greasy 
doughnuts, a cup of hot coffee, and a 
slice of cold mince pie. — Biff, bang, 
and the stuff was gone. While a 
large mouthful of meat was being cut 
in two by his teeth, a chunk of potato, 
upon which rested a pyramid of butter, 
was on its flight to his mouth. This 
morsel made no halt. — One pump of 
his Adam's apple and it was gone. 
This was followed by a gulp of hot 
coffee to heat him up, then another of 
ice water to cool him off His arms 
worked like an automatic Punch and 
Judy fight, his back described a semi- 
circle, so as to bring his mouth di- 
rectly over his plate. This was to 
economize on distance from his plate 



I 62 PERFECT HEALTH. 

up to the hole in his face. He looked 
indigestion, liver complaint, and gout. 
He was tall, angular and stoop- 
shouldered, — complexion sallow, — 
teeth bad, — eyes muddy, — expression 
sullen, — with a convex abdomen and a 
concave chest. All of this no doubt 
was the reward for his rush. 

The most unfortunate thing about 
people is that they never take anything 
unto themselves. The above case 
taken from life applies to millions of 
Americans. But when they read this 
they will in turn apply it to some one 
else. Most people in need of diatetic 
reform when a change is prescribed, 
most invariably say, " Now, my case is 
a little different. It is a very peculiar 
one. That kind of diet is all right for 
some people, but it won't do for me." 



MASTICATION. 1 63 

People always desire to pursue lines 
of least resistance, — to reason in the 
direction of their desires. It takes a 
hero to reason up hill — against himself, 
— against his appetite, — against his 
preconceived or inherited opinions, but 
it is only heroes that work out reforms. 
The satisfied or conservative man is a 
useless man. The unsatisfied spirit is 
the flint applied to the intellectual 
steel. It develops truth and exposes 
falsehood. It silences the stupid 
croaking of the conservative who says 
" Impossible," of all things new. 

The conservative man clings to the 
old with an apology. In all ages 
he has ridden into notice bestride 
other men's achievements. He al- 
ways stands in the middle so he can 
more easily flop to the side of the sue- 




FIG. 12. 

This shows the first position of ex- 
ercise completed in Fig. 13. 

Stretch the body to its utmost 
height, bending slowly and reaching 
forward as far as possible without 
bending the knees, endeavoring to 
touch the floor in front of feet as in 
Figure 13, 



MASTICATION. 1 67 

cessful. He has always fought the 
free flight of thought and hung on to 
the world like a leaden weight. The 
present altitude of civilization, has been 
reached, not by his aid, but in spite of 
him. The conservative man can be 
construed either way. You never 
know quite what he means. He is 
always just between. He is very 
much like the drummer who wired his 
family physician who was out of the 
city, something like this. " Doctor, 
come home at once, Mother-in-law at 
death's door, and try and help me pull 
her through." 

Did you ever think that at every 
step in the world's progress of 
thought, the repressing hand of a dead 
man appears? I am perfectly willing 
to respect the dead, so long as it will 



I 68 PERFECT HEALTH. 

consent to be dead, but when it insists 
that I obey it, I rebel. To this bit of 
infidelity I owe my Life, and to the 
hosts of afflicted I would say study 
your own case — think and act for 
yourselves. Every Pain — every ache 
— every ill is a signal registered upon 
the brain that you may understand it 
and apply a remedy. 

The real motive power of all pro- 
gress and invention is the disobedient, 
dissatisfied man. It is he who, be- 
lieving things are wrong, sets himself 
about to fix them, who thinks he can 
create a new order of things by 
experimenting and trying something 
new, that has girdled the earth with 
live wires, and made of the ocean but 
a billowed highway on which to con- 
vey the wealth of one land to another, 



MASTICATION. 1 69 

and made cold, crude metal spin, 
weave and talk with almost human in- 
telligence. 

Getting back to our subject, we 
should eat only such food as excites 
the sense of taste. Taste is the police- 
man of the stomach that Nature has 
put on guard to see that nothing enters 
that strange factory but the necessary 
material for good blood, muscle, bone 
and brain. 

Nature has made hundreds of little 
wells under the tongue and in the 
throat, out of which the water is 
pumped by the action of the jaws 
in mastication. Nature produces just 
enough of this saliva from these wells 
to dissolve and assimilate the food we 
eat. It is ridiculous and the height of 
folly to dilute this natural water with 



I70 PERFECT HEALTH. 

beer, wine, or even spring water. — 
Nothing should be drunk with meals. 
In selecting the kind of food to eat we 
should obey the suggestion of hunger 
to the letter. If we did this we would 
masticate our food until swallowing 
would be done involuntarily. 

It is first necessary to become ac- 
quainted with the evils of swallowing 
half chewed foods, and then we should 
learn the value and pleasure that comes 
from perfect mastication. In other 
words, we should study and learn the 
facts and we will instinctively know 
when food is masticated sufficient to 
have contributed its full share to the 
taste, and when it is prepared for 
assimilation. 

To impress upon a patient the 
importance of mastication, a very emi- 



MASTICATION. 171 

nent authority upon the subject once 
said, "To insure complete mastication 
and involuntary swallowing, masticate 
each morsel of food as long as if it 
were the last one left upon the earth 
and as if the length of time you had to 
live after eating it depended entirely 
upon the number of chews you made 
upon it. 

Every molecule of food that is not 
tasted fails to perform the purpose for 
which it is eaten, — fails to be regis- 
tered in the brain where the real sense 
of hunger is satisfied. But it does not 
fail to contribute its full share towards 
indigestion, impure blood and disease. 
We should by all means treat the 
organs of taste fairly. If we did this, 
indigestion, the National ill, would 
disappear. 



FIG. 13. 

This shows the full movement be- 
gun in Fig. 12. 

The position assumed in this move- 
ment is especially advantageous for 
deep breathing. 

Inhale while ascending and exhale 
while descending. 




«cAf\j 







MASTICATION. 1 75 

Tasteless residue should be dis- 
carded from the mouth. — Tasteless 
matter possesses no nutrition. The 
objection most people have to discard- 
ing woody fibre and tasteless matter is 
that it violates the decorum of the 
table. Hence, you must swallow them 
to get rid of them. This is all moon- 
shine. Do you not remove the pits of 
cherries, grapes and small fruits, the 
shell of lobsters — bones of fowls, etc? 
You do not swallow these things to 
get rid of them. Then why not re- 
move the dead, worthless, fibrous 
matter found in tough meat, celery, 
radishes, and such foods ? 

The action of the jaws in mastica- 
tion is the means of generating a 
flow of saliva, without which perfect 
digestion is impossible. If you can 



I76 PERFECT HEALTH. 

afford to devote ten thousand actions 
of the jaw daily to senseless gossip, 
then is it fair to deny adequate jaw 
service to the most important function 
of health? 



BREATHING. 

T is said by a great authority that 
^Sil there is no disease but bad 
blood. If this is true, common air is 
the greatest element in all the forces 
of Nature. For it is upon it we 
must depend for the purifying of our 
blood. 

The blood is the scavenger of the 
body. It leaves the heart a bright 
red, and laden with poisons it has col- 
lected from dead and decaying tissue, 
it returns to the lungs a dark purple. 
It comes to the lungs to be purified by 

coming in contact with the oxygen we 

(177) 



9 JG^<M^ 




FIG. 14. 

This illustrates an exercise espe- 
cially recommended for strengthening 
the muscles of the neck and sides. 

It should be taken by moving the 
body at the waist line from side to 
side, inhaling from left to right and ex- 
haling from right to left 



BREATHING. l8l 

breathe. The film that separates the 
air cells from the blood cells in the 
lungs is so thin that one million of 
them could be placed one upon an- 
other, and the pile would not be an 
inch high. 

Some idea of the great importance 
of the lungs may be conceived when 
we remember that a pair of lungs of 
normal size contains about 725,000,000 
air cells. If they were all placed side 
by side on a flat surface, they would 
cover a space fifty feet square. There 
are several million tiny canals called 
capillaries, through which the blood 
comes to the lungs. It is calculated 
that all the blood in the body comes to 
the lungs to meet the air once every 
two minutes. 

The poison or carbon dioxide col- 



I 82 PERFECT HEALTH. 

lected by the blood on its journey 
through the body, is passed into the 
air in the lungs, and breathed out 
through the nostrils. Every time a 
grown person breathes, he poisons 
about a barrel-full of air. Twenty 
people shut up in a street car will 
poison all the air in it at one breath, 
and yet we see human ganders rail at 
the conductor for opening a transom 
in a closed car. In order to keep the 
blood pure, every person in a room 
needs about 3,000 cubic feet of fresh 
air an hour. 

Breathing is the secret of a perfect 
physical and muscular development. 
Physicians and instructors throughout 
the country are beginning to realize 
that the proper breathing of pure air is 
the most potent factor in the great 



BREATHING. 1 83 

question of health. The importance 
of air in the sustenance of life can be 
measured by the period of time life can 
endure without it, as compared with 
other agencies. We could live several 
years comparatively motionless (with- 
out exercise) ; we could live several 
months without food, but not an hour 
without air. 

Much study and investigation has 
been the means of abolishing the 
elaborately fitted gymnasium. Heavy 
dumb-bells, Indian clubs and chest 
weights, are obsolete. Any living 
room, where fresh air can be freely 
circulated, makes an excellent gym- 
nasium. The pupil was taught in the 
old school of physical training that 
breathing was of secondary import- 
ance. You must breathe to live, was 



The pose on the next page is one 
of a group of six made for an artist 
and sculptor's model. It represents 
the body above the waist held natural 
while the muscles of the legs are 
flexed just enough to show pronounced 
outlines. 



BREATHING. 187 

the theory. In the old method, muscle 
building was the only essential to 
health. 

To-day it is known that abnormally 
developed muscle is always obtained 
at the expense of the vital centre sys- 
tem. In the new method, if I may call 
it such, less attention is paid to mere 
muscle building, and more to making 
the vital organs healthy and giving 
them the proper amount of room, 
which enables them to perform their 
functional duties. This room can 
only be made by deep diaphragmatic 
breathing. 

It would astonish any one who will 
study the science of breathing and 
practice it for ten minutes night and 
morning, to see its effects and virtues. 
But why practice breathing for only a 



I 88 PERFECT HEALTH, 

few moments night and morning ? 
When walking or running affords the 
best possible position in which to 
practice deep diaphragmatic breathing. 
One can soon accustom themselves to 
taking long deep draughts of air about 
every third or fourth step, until it will 
become an involuntary habit, which 
will make it possible to breathe cor- 
rectly twenty-four hours in the day 
instead of a few minutes night and 
morning. 

Strength and vitality do not come 
from the food we eat, but from the air 
we breathe. Food simply replaces 
the tissue which we wear out during 
the day. Air to the human body is 
not only a purifying factor, but it is the 
parent of energy and force. Your 
blood flows through your body and 



BREATHING. 1 89 

distributes to the nerves, muscles, 
brain and your endless millions of life 
cells, the force which that blood secures 
in the lungs by contact with the air. 

If people could once realize the 
value of common air, it seems that out- 
side of a few cases of hereditary dis- 
ease, there might be no such thing as 
human ills, and it is entirely possible 
for many hereditary diseases to be 
overcome by natural treatment. 

By putting into the stomach only 
clean nutritious food, which this 
wonderful machine manufactures into 
blood, and by taking the right kind 
of exercise to distribute this blood 
through the body, and by knowing 
how to breathe so as to keep the blood 
pure, sickness and contagion would be 
absolutely impossible. 



I9O PERFECT HEALTH. 

There is no more danger of a per- 
fectly healthy man taking the so-called 
contagious or zymotic diseases, from 
coming in contact with them, than 
there would be in a sick man catching 
health from a healthy one./ Con- 
tagious disease must have prepared 
soil in which to propagate. 

The ability to resist disease is meas- 
ured by the purity of the blood, and 
the purity of the blood is determined 
by lung capacity and fresh air. Na- 
ture refuses to keep alive any part of 
the anatomy that is not kept in con- 
stant use. Consumption is merely 
Nature throwing off and destroying 
lungs that are unused. ' The front 
window is a positive cure for con- 
sumption. 

Endurance is entirely a question of 



BREATHING. I9I 

lung capacity. When starting to run 
a race, you draw in your breath before 
you begin, and the winning of the race 
is mainly a question of breath. That 
man can win a ten mile race who has 
enough lung capacity to purify the in- 
creased amount of blood that comes to 
the lungs for ten miles. If you had 
on a tight corset, and you were only 
using the tops of your lungs, in all 
probability you couldn't run a hundred 
yards, but, if you were as Nature in- 
tended you, and you had all of your 
lungs in use, you might run as far as 
a dog or a horse. 

What is generally known as 
" second wind," as applied to running 
or any violent physical effort, is noth- 
ing but the act of calling into use the 
entire air cell capacity of the lungs. 



FIG. 15. 

This shows the first position for a 
very valuable and vigorous exercise. 

Clinch the fists bringing them up at 
the sides with the shoulders pressed 
well towards the rear. Left foot for- 
ward. Flex the muscles of the entire 
body— then strike out with the left 
hand at an imaginary object with all 
the force possible, so as to turn the 
body from the waist line as shown in 
Fig. 16. 




BREATHING. 1 95 

During violent effort more blood 
rushes to the lungs to be purified. 
This causes more air cells to be put 
into use, and the added strength 
and energy that comes from this, is 
thought by many to be " second 
wind." 

Our real force, mental and physical, 
comes from the lungs and not from the 
stomach. We dig our graves with 
our teeth. We ruin ourselves by in- 
dulging the foolish idea that the 
stomach was made to give us strength. 
The best it can do is to replace wasted 
tissue and manufacture blood. 

It is little wonder that there are so 
many cousumptives and dyspeptics 
when the idea prevails so widely that 
the seat of strength is the stomach. 
The average man, and especially the 



I96 PERFECT HEALTH. 

average woman, barely uses one-third 
of the lungs; i.e., breathes one-third 
of the air necessary, but they will fill 
their stomach with twice, yes three 
times, the amount of food they can 
assimilate or convert into energy. 

There is a sheet of muscles called 
the diaphragm, which acts as a floor 
to the chest, located at the bottom of 
the ribs, and serving as a roof for all 
the abdominal muscles. This is by 
far the most important muscle in the 
human anatomy, and especially the 
office it performs in the act of respira- 
tion. It is impossible for the organs 
of the vital centre system to be kept in 
a healthy condition and be provided 
with room in which to perform their 
work without the practice of diaphrag- 
matic breathing, which merely means 



BREATHING. I97 

the calling into use of the entire lung 
capacity and expanding and contract- 
ing the diaphragm with each respira- 
tion. Now that the location diaphragm 
is known, let us learn how to exercise 
and use it. 

Most people believe that the chest 
expands as a result of inhaling air, but 
this is not so. While the chest may 
expand very slightly when we inhale, 
the natural expansion should be in the 
region of the diaphragm. 

It is wrong to practice drawing up 
the ; diaphragm when filling the lungs 
with air, in order to expand the chest. 
This keeps the air from entering the 
lower part of the lungs, and causes the 
great evil of chest breathing. 

That this chest breathing is practiced 
by a great majority of people, was 



ig8 PERFECT HEALTH. 

evidenced by the fact that out of over 
a thousand people examined at my 
school and at a health home where I 
was physical director, I found but 
eight who breathed properly. 

All women who wear corsets must 
of necessity breathe from the top of the 
lungs. The corset presses the internal 
organs up under the chest walls, which 
compels the wearer to practice chest 
breathing. Enough air forced into 
the lungs to fill them completely while 
a tight corset is worn, would cause in- 
stant death. The corset should be 
sent to the Museum in Venice, and 
hung up with the thumb-screw, the 
rack, and the collar of needles. 

I have no fight to make with the 
wearer. It is the corset I am after. 
Neither shall I dip my pen in vitriol 



BREATHING. 1 99 

to write an opinion of the gentler sex 
for doing something upon which the 
majority of men set the seal of their 
approval. 

If all men admired the before taking 
waist and after taking hips, then I 
would wear the corset and the cotton, 
but all men do not. There are a good 
many men nowadays who have flow- 
ing in their veins real red blood, who 
know the real woman and won't have 
any other. 

There is also a class of parodies on 
God's masterpiece whose ambition be- 
gins with the chrysanthemum and ends 
with the collar. Whose veins are full 
of pink tea, and who couldn't tell the 
statue of Minerva from a Bowery 
clothes horse. Your health and 
physique will be the most potent factor 



FIG. 16. 

This shows the movement com- 
plete. The left hand should be brought 
back to position before striking with 
the right. 

A second or two should intervene 
between strokes, and they should be 
alternated until signs of fatigue ap- 
pear. 




BREATHING. 203 

in determining which one of these 
classes you will most attract. 

^Now, seriously, if a woman must 
wear a corset, she should throw it off 
and practice diaphragmatic breathing 
before an open window for an hour, 
morning and evening. If she would 
do this, the diaphragm and lungs 
would expand to a natural, normal and 
healthy dimension, and the accumula- 
tion of surplus adipose tissue in the 
region of the waist would be entirely 
prevented. Lacing would also be dis- 
couraged and unnecessary, because of 
the energy and vigor that deep breath- 
ing would give them, and the discom- 
fort that the corset would consequently 
inflicts 

Now suppose we close with a little 
breathing lesson. 



204 PERFECT HEALTH. 

Start breathing slowly, counting 
mentally, I — 2 — 3 — 4, as you inhale, 
at the same time expanding the abdo- 
men. The expansion will first rise 
gradually from the abdomen to the 
ribs, then it will rise to the chest, ex- 
panding it very little. Hold the air 
for a second or two, then exhale slow- 
ly, counting as before, 1 — 2 — 3 — 4, at 
the same time the abdominal muscles 
should be made to slowly recede. 

This one breathing exercise, if prac- 
ticed daily, will in a short time become 
natural and involuntary, and you will 
have learned the greatest lesson, and 
called to your aid the greatest force in 
Nature. 

It is impossible to give in a single 
chapter a treatise on breathing that 
will treat this subject fairly, we are pre- 



BREATHING. 205 

paring now, however, a booklet on this 
subject which will be both exhaustive 
and comprehensive, which will appear 
in a short time in our ten cent li natural 
health" library series. 





FIG. 17. 

From an erect position with hands 
on hips, bend the body only from the 
waist line, as far back as possible ; 
then bend forward, keeping the knees 
rigid as position shown in Fig. 18. 




BATHING. 

HE vegetable, animal, and even 
T" the mineral kingdoms, have 
been exploited by alleged learned men 
so long in search of remedies with the 
claim and the hope of curing and pre- 
venting all kinds of ills, that people 
have failed to make themselves ac- 
quainted with the great virtues of 
things easy to obtain. 

It is a misfortune indeed, that there 
is rooted deep in the human heart the 
desire to depend upon others, to be- 
lieve in others, to try and buy that 
character of information and service 

which they could secure for themselves 

(209) 



2IO PERFECT HEALTH. 

by a little hard work and hard think- 
ing. When we get into trouble, we 
rush to the lawyer. When we have 
a little ache, we rush to the doctor. 
When we get in love, we rush to the 
fortune teller. We are thus not only 
deprived of the opportunity to gain 
knowledge for ourselves, but we are 
relieved of much of our hard earned 
wealth, and many times plunged 
deeper into the difficulties from which 
we were honestly endeavoring to 
escape. 

But few people have any conception 
of what can be done with water. Just 
common, ordinary water. A book a 
dozen times the size of this could be 
filled with facts pertaining to the vir- 
tues and remedial effects of water. 
Health depends as much upon know- 



BATHING. 211 

ing how and when to bathe as it does 
upon exercise. A person in a perfectly 
normal and healthy condition should 
take a cleansing bath with soap and 
warm water twice or three times a 
week, according to the weather, occu- 
pation, etc., and the body should be 
covered with water every morning, 
applied either with a shower or sponge. 
The average physical culturists, in- 
structors and doctors advocate a cold 
bath every morning. The bath is as 
susceptible of ifs, ands, and provisos 
as diet and exercise. There is hardly 
an ill to which some form of hydro- 
pathy or water treatment cannot be 
applied with great benefit, but the best 
that can be done in a volume of this 
size is to recite a few fundamental 
facts. 




This is a pose selected from Athe- 
nian models and is one of the most 
difficult and trying known to artists 
It is intended to show a perfectly de- 
veloped figure from a very critical 
point of view, which is the reverse 
of the poses shown on pages 44 and 
184. 



BATHING. 215 

A cold bath every morning, for 
those whose circulation is sufficiently 
active to recuperate quickly, is almost 
a certain guarantee against colds, 
throat and nasal disorders. The cold 
bath can be relieved of its shock to the 
system by gradually lowering the 
temperature of the water, starting with 
it a little above blood heat, and taking 
it colder each morning. This will in 
a very short time accustom the system 
to cold water, and what may have been 
an unpleasant duty will become a 
pleasure. The daily morning bath, 
like exercise, should be comfortable 
and pleasant. 

When I first began to study health 
laws, and found myself fast recovering 
from invalidism, it was impossible to 
take a cold bath. This was on ac- 



2l6 PERFECT HEALTH. 

count of sluggish circulation of the 
blood. Those who are not blessed 
with an active circulation cannot take 
with any great benefit a cold bath. 
When this is discovered, one should 
at once go to work and increase the 
activity of the blood until the cold bath 
could be taken with benefit. This is 
the scale by which the circulation of 
the blood can be accurately measured. 
Every bath room and every one trav- 
eling from place to place should be 
orovided with a metal shower ring, 
attached to a six foot hose. This can 
be attached to any bath tub faucet and 
the bath be taken in clean, flowing 
water, either for cleansing or the cold 
morning shower. 

The Turkish bath is one of the 
luxuries of the age. Nature has 



BATHING. 217 

placed in the skin millions of little holes 
called pores, which serve as canals to 
aid in carrying off the poisons that 
continually accumulate in the body. 
These pores cannot do their work un- 
less there is sufficient natural heat 
generated in the body daily to create 
perspiration, but the occupation of the 
majority of people is not sufficiently 
laborious to generate heat up to the 
sweating point, so the Turkish bath 
becomes not only a luxury, but one 
of the greatest of necessities. The 
Turkish bath is the only cure for that 
offensive odor that sometimes attaches 
itself to very nice people. 

A gentleman from Russia, whose 
name ended in ski, was brought before 
a New York Judge a few days ago on 
some trivial complaint of a neighbor. 



2l8 PERFECT HEALTH. 

The charge was hardly grave enough 
for imprisonment or fine, but the 
Judge thought something ought to be 
done, so he said, " The penalty im- 
posed by the court on this man shall 
be an immediate bath," and he fairly 
howled at the prisoner, saying, — "Did 
you ever take a bath in your life?" 
The man from the Occident looked 
much surprised and injured. He up- 
turned the palms of his hands, elevated 
both shoulders with a little jerk, and 
replied, " Mr. Chudge, I never vas ar- 
rested before." 

Perfect health laws, in their last 
analysis, are the simplest of natural 
requirements. Nature has provided 
three avenues to carry off the waste of 
the human body, namely, the ali- 
mentary canal, the kidneys, and the 



BATHING. 219 

pores of the skin. Perfect health is 
impossible unless all these avenues are 
kept open, and in daily operation. 
The Turkish bath and the cleansing 
soap rub are the two greatest agents 
in opening these much neglected es- 
cape valves. 

A tepid bath at about 99 degrees F. 
taken just before retiring, in a tub 
where the whole body except the face 
can be immersed, is the only substitute 
known to science for sleep. The rea- 
son whv this bath is so beneficial is 
that the nerves are relaxed and rested 
by having the body immersed in an 
element of greater specific gravity than 
the air. 

I have known cases of prolonged 
and chronic insomnia to be cured by 
this form of bath. Sleep, with the ex- 



FIG. 18. 

This shows the reverse movement 
of Figure 1 7 and completes the exer- 
cise. 

It affords a splendid position for 
deep or diaphragmatic breathing. 

Inhale while bending backward and 
exhale as the body is brought forward. 




BATHING. 223 

ception of the heart beats, is intended 
for perfect rest. The bath above 
named will come near enough pro- 
ducing this result to answer many 
months for sleep in cases of insomnia. 
The period of time devoted to this 
bath is indefinite. 

But few people realize the great 
importance of an internal bath. Upon 
arising in the morning one should 
drink from two to four glasses of pure, 
cool water, and drop down upon the 
back, elevating the knees, and flush or 
wash the stomach by drawing the 
abdomen up and down by muscular 
action. 

The drinking of water should be 
totally eliminated at meals, and for 
two hours thereafter. Then about 
three pints should be drunk before the 



224 PERFECT HEALTH. 

next meal However, natural thirst 
should govern drinking. 

When the smoker, beer drinker, or 
meat eater is endeavoring to reform, 
there is no greater aid than consuming 
large quantities of pure water. 

The following suggestions are well 
to observe in connection with bathing. 

(i.) A bath should never be taken 
in a room cooler than the temperature 
of the body. 

(2.) The best time for a warm 
cleansing, or soap, bath, is just before 
retiring. 

(3.) The best time for a cold 
sponge or shower bath is in the morn- 
ing immediately after your physical 
exercise. 

(4.) After the cold bath the body 
should be rubbed with a Turkish towel 



BATHING. 225 

or flesh brush until the skin is pink 
from increased circulation. 

(5.) A two minute bath and a 
twenty minute rub is better than a 
twenty minute bath and a two minute 
rub. 



OVER-DRESSING. 

T was a cold wintry day. A long 

^pot train of passenger cars en route 

for California had pulled into a little 

station on the C. P. R. R. on the top 

of Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

A few Indians, rugged types of the 
Aborigines, had come timidly to the 
train to offer their trinkets for sale to 
the passengers, The mercury was 
toying in the vicinity of zero, and the 
air was full of frost and snow. 

Some Eastern ladies, moved by a 
desire to do good and see the real In- 
dian, approached a big fellow, clad 

only in a blanket, which was carelessly 

(226) 



OVER-DRESSING. 227 

wrapped about his waist, leaving his 
upper body and lower limbs almost 
entirely uncovered. 

"Aren't you cold?" inquired the 
most sympathetic lady. The Indian 
replied by offering a three cornered 
blue trinket for ten cents. The article 
was purchased for a quarter. 

"Dear me, I would think you would 
freeze. Aren't you cold?" persisted 
the lady, who had donated ten cents 
for trinket and fifteen for talk. Hav- 
ing failed to collect for the latter in- 
vestment, she insisted upon an answer. 
"Aren't you cold," said she, in a very 
sympathetic and inquiring tone. 

"Face cold?" replied the healthy 
Navajo, pointing to her face. 

" No," said the lady, " of course my 
FACE isn't cold." 



e 



FIG. 19. 

This illustrates one of my original 
stretching exercises. 

But few people — even instructors, 
realize the great value of stretching or 
elongating the muscles and the body 
entire. { 

Inhale while slowly raising the left 
arm, retain the air for a few seconds, 
and stretch as if endeavoring to reach 
the ceiling with one hand and the floor 
with the other. 

These movements can be alternated 
from six to a dozen times with great 
benefit, or until signs of fatigue are 
felt. 



OVER-DRESSING. 23 1 

" Indian all face;" grunted the red- 
man, and with an air of disgust he 
strode away. 

When the theory of heat and cold, 
or the temperature of the human body 
is once understood, the question of 
clothing for comfort is answered. The 
body is kept warm by circulation of 
the blood. — It is made cold by lack of 
circulation. 

Were a man to put on two over- 
coats at the first snowfall, he would 
find that he needed them before the 
Winter was done. If another man 
should leave off an overcoat altogether 
during the Winter, and practice such 
exercise and habits as would produce 
the highest and healthiest form of cir- 
culation, he would find, no doubt, that 
he would get through the Winter as 



232 PERFECT HEALTH. 

comfortably without an overcoat as his 
neighbor who had worn two. 

The evils of over-dressing are strik- 
ingly pronounced. Everything in 
Nature refuses to be aided by artificial 
means, but responds readily to that 
which is natural. — Exposure is Na- 
ture's only method of increasing our 
powers of endurance. 

The history of the human race leads 
all students to believe that there was a 
time when Nature furnished the only 
covering for the body, but since it has 
become a custom to wear clothes, we 
should make the habit as harmless as 
possible. 

Woolen garments should never be 
worn next to the skin. Each fibre of 
wool is a tube, and when worn as a 
nether garment becomes filled with the 



OVER-DRESSING. 233 

poisons that are continuously escaping 
through the pores, and no amount of 
soap and soaking can remove them. 
Besides, wool creates a moisture on 
the skin, that keeps the pores continu- 
ously open, rendering the body more 
liable to cold and less able to stand 
the constant changes of a Winter 
temperature. Hence they defeat the 
very end we seek to obtain. 

I would recommend an open mesh 
linen or cotton garment, first, because 
the friction over the service of the skin 
tends to stimulate circulation, and 
second, because it affords an oppor- 
tunity for the air to come in contact 
with the pores. A cold air bath, like a 
cold water bath, fortifies the abdomi- 
nal machinery against colds and dis- 
ease. 




FIG. 20. 

This movement I regard as one of 
the best of my stretching or growing 
exercises. 

Extend the hands upward as shown 
in figure, at the same time inhaling a 
deep breath and rising upon the toes. 
Retain the air in the lungs for a few 
seconds, walking upon the toes and 
swaying from side to side, stretching 
'the entire frame to its utmost. 

I sincerely believe that it is to these 
stretching exercises that I owe sev- 
eral inches of my height. 



OVER-DRESSING. 237 

It should be the object of every per- 
son pursuing a hygienic method of liv- 
ing to guard against over-dressing 
with the same care that they would 
guard against over-eating or dressing 
too thin. It is surprising to know 
how light one can dress in Winter and 
still remain comfortable, if the law of 
exercise is obeyed which governs cir- 
culation. Instead of thin, light cloth- 
ing rendering one subject to cold, it is 
just the reverse. 

It is a custom universal to over-do, 
or carry all our habits to measures of 
extremity. It is nothing uncommon 
to find people suffering with eating 
indigestion, clothing indigestion, and 
sometimes literary indigestion, which 
means all these things carried to 
abnormal limits. It seems impossible 



238 PERFECT HEALTH. 

for us to ascertain the truth, except by 
the painful process of swinging the 
pendulum of our habits to their limit 
in both directions, and finally stopping 
at normal or natural lines. 




SLEEP. 

HE high artificialism of city life 
f f^ is one of the things for which 
there seems no adequate remedy. 
Man's natural habitat is the earth. To 
be natural and healthy he should walk 
on the earth, dig in the earth, and live 
from some kind of labor exerted upon 
its service. But in cities he is born 
and raised upon a rock and pulled 
about from place to place by machinery, 
and eats and drinks things of which he 
has no conception of how they were 
produced or from whence they came. 

The most baneful effect of city life is 

(239) 



This is the last of the group of the 
six classic poses (before referred to) 
not embraced in the exercises. The 
selection of this group of pictures was 
made by three of the best American 
artists, and their presence in this book 
is to show the results that can be at- 
tained by a thorough knowledge and 
practice of the science of eating, 
exercising and breathing. — The three 
great fundamental laws upon which 
rests the entire structure of human 
health and development 




SLEEP. 243 

its night attractions. It has extended 
the afternoon into midnight, and the 
night far into the morning. 

It is during the hours of sleep that 
Nature sets up her most active work 
of construction in the human body. 
Perfect physical development is impos- 
sible without at least eight hours per- 
fect rest, (sleep), out of each twenty- 
four. 

The question of strength, both 
mental and physical, is governed more 
by sleep than any other one factor in 
Nature. Thousands of young people 
wreck themselves completely between 
the ages of eighteen and twenty-five 
for lack of sleep. 

There is a critical period in life, 
when Nature is putting on the cap- 
stones, as it were, of the body. If the 



244 PERFECT HEALTH. 

law of sleep, (construction), is disre- 
garded at this age, it is ever after- 
wards a matter of impossibility to 
make amends. In female life this 
critical period is between the years of 
fifteen and twenty. It is during these 
years more than any others that the 
great question of premature old age 
and the endurance of nearly all of the 
faculties are determined. 

Were I a girl and wanted to be 
beautiful at forty, I would have eight 
hours sleep out of every twenty-four, 
beau or no beau. I would tell the gay 
lotharios that I would rather have 
muscle and roses at forty than wrinkles. 
The most critical period among males 
is between the years of seventeen and 
twenty-two. 

Sleep is Nature's trial balance, and if 



SLEEP. 245 

the balance is not struck daily, the dif- 
ference must be carried over from day 
to day, — from week to week, — month 
to month, — and year to year, until 
weakened faculties and disease square 
the account. "Stop and think, in this 
strange, curious somnambulism we call 
life, Nature is the only thing of which 
the mind can conceive that conducts 
its affairs with unswerving justice. It 
opens an account with every life at the 
cradle, and closes it at the coffin, and 
the life account must be balanced. If 
its laws have been violated and disre- 
garded, an early settlement is the re- 
sult. It may not take the life to settle 
the debt but it will take the sight, the 
hearing, the vitality, or it may take its 
pay from all the faculties alike. If 
they have been obeyed its appreciation 



246 PERFECT HEALTH. 

is shown by extending the term of life 
and keeping the faculties in natural 
and perfect condition/ 

It is better to sleep upon the right 
side because the orifice that empties 
the stomach is on that side. How- 
ever, to make sleep restful, and gain 
its highest reward, a comfortable posi- 
tion is probably of most consideration. 

But few people attach enough 
importance to the sanitary condition of 
the bed room. One person can render 
all the air in an unventilated bed room 
entirely unfit to breathe, in eight 
minutes. 

Growing plants, decaying fruits, 
impure and standing water, should all 
be eliminated from the bed room. 

It would be far more healthy to 
sleep in a stable with the stock than in 



SLEEP. 247 

a room filled with tobacco smoke, or 
in which there is a cuspidor containing 
the soggy stumps of cigars, cigarettes 
and saliva. 

There is no time during the twenty- 
four hours when pure air is so neces- 
sary as during sleep. It is then that 
the building and repairing process is 
in most active operation. ' The blood 
is flowing to the lungs in a solid stream 
to be purified by coming in contact 
with the air we breathe. If it meets 
impure air, it must in disappointment 
return and do its building with the 
kind of material furnished. 

The lungs are the great crucible of 
the human body, into which the blood 
and air are eternally being poured, and 
whether the red stream of life returns 
on its strange mission of construction, 



THIS FIGURE 
Illustrates the correct poise that 
should always be observed in walk- 
I ing — In order to cultivate a grace- 
| ful, springy, lithesome step, the weight 
of the body should be thrown always 
on the balls of the feet, — ; but few 
[ people realize the character expressed 
in the walk. A flat-footed, soggy 
walk indicates a sordid and selfish 
disposition, while a lithesome, cheer- 
ful carriage indicates a disposition 
that is happy and amiable. 



SLEEP. 251 

laden with pure building material, or 
not, depends absolutely on the quality 
and quantity of air with which it was 
mixed in this marvelous and living 
retort. 



WALKING— RUNNINCx. 




E law of health is ceaseless 
f^ motion. An oak that is blown 
to and fro by the winds, strikes its 
roots deep into the earth and is healthy. 
The stream of molten snow that starts 
from the mountain top, — that runs and 
rolls from nook to nook, — that laughs 
and leaps from rock to rock, is pure, 
and pure only because it keeps on the 
move. When it reaches the valley 
and rests for a time, it becomes stale 
and unfit for use. 

Still air is stagnant air. The very 
earth on which we exist is exercising 

through space at the rate of 18^ 

(252) 



WALKING— RUNNING. 253 

miles a second one way, and about 
1,000 miles an hour another. Rest 
would mean death to its myriad forms 
of life. 

There are two forces in Nature 
eternally at work — one of construction, 
one of destruction. — They are pitted 
one against the other. The element 
of construction is perpetual motion, — 
the element of destruction is rest. The 
limit to which strength, and even the 
stature of man may be carried, is de- 
termined largely by the amount and 
character of motion he takes. 

One of the best all around exercises 
known in athletics, is walking, because 
it is natural. The closer to Nature 
we keep in all our habits, the healthier 
we will be. Nearly every muscle in 
the body can be exercised while walk- 



254 PERFECT HEALTH. 

ing. It affords ohe of the best possi- 
ble positions for deep or diaphragmatic 
breathing. 

As in breathing and eating, most 
people live all their lives and never 
learn how to walk. To walk correctly 
the trunk should be bent slightly for- 
ward from the waist line, shoulders 
thrown back and chest forward, the 
step should be quick and about thirty 
inches in length. Push off the ball of 
one foot and light upon the other. 

While walking, the muscles of the 
arms, the abdomen, the back, and 
sides, can be flexed and relaxed while 
breathing deeply, which gives the 
body its best, most natural, and most 
constructive exercise. The greatest 
value in exercise is to quicken the ac- 
tion of the heart, so as to send the 



WALKING— RUNNING. 255 

blood, more rapidly through the veins 
on its great mission of cleansing and 
building. No benefit, however, can 
come from this unless the blood meets 
with an increased amount of oxygen in 
the lungs to purify the increased 
amount of blood that flows there for 
that purpose. 

There is but one better exercise 
known than walking. That is run- 
ning. A dog or a horse will go all 
day in a brisk trot, a deer or antelope 
can run forty-eight consecutive hours. 
It is entirely within the limits of reason 
to believe that a man can acquire 
strength and lung capacity enough to 
run from 8 to 12 hours without under- 
going much fatigue. 

Endurance is not so much a matter 
of muscle as lung capacity. A man 




THIS FIGURE 
Illustrates the correct position to be 
observed in running — The chest 
thrown well forward, shoulders back, 
chin slightly elevated, breathing deeply 
through the nostrils. Running while 
one of the best exercises known 
should never be practiced beyond the 
first signs of fatigue. Four or five 
miles can be easily traversed in a 
slow, springy trot, if deep or diaphrag- 
matic breathing is practiced while in 
action. 



WALKING— RUNNING. 259 

has more lung capacity, according to 
size, than a dog or deer. His lack of 
endurance is because of his unnatural 
habits. He eats unnatural food, drinks 
highly concentrated and unnatural 
beverages. He has over 725,000,000 
air cells in his lungs, but he does not 
use one-third, probably not a tenth of 
them. He has 2,500,000 holes in his 
skin called pores, through which he 
also breathes, or should breathe, but 
he raps himself up in so many rags 
that this great purpose of Nature is al- 
most entirely defeated. 

An air and sunshine bath is one of 
the best things in Nature. It beau- 
tifies, strengthens and invigorates, 

I would recommend even to the 
healthy, and especially to those afflicted 
with a cough, or a tendency towards 



260 PERFECT HEALTH. 

delicate lungs, an early morning walk, 
at first a short one, but making it 
brisk, increasing it daily until the limit 
of time that can be devoted to this ex- 
ercise is reached. 

You have no time, did you say? 
Then take time. Tell your boss or 
your business that you have discovered 
something, that you have learned how 
to walk or run, and if they will allow 
you time to practice with your new 
discovery, that you will be twice as 
valuable. 

Now, not jesting — isn't it ridiculous 
to think of a sane man or woman 
claiming that they have no time to en- 
gage for two hours out of each twenty- 
four in that which would undoubtedly 
add many years to their life, and so 
vastly intensify their ability to enjoy 



WALKING— RUNNING. 26 1 

the years they have left. A brisk walk 
or run in the early morning, and an- 
other in the afternoon or evening, will 
greatly increase both the digestion and 
circulation, and add largely to the 
ability to sleep. 

Where out of door running cannot 
be practiced, I would recommend 
stationery running before an open 
window, reckoning each step at about 
three feet. It is easy to calculate 
when a mile or two has been marked 
off. 



G 



FIG. 21. 

This exercise is especially recom- 
mended for the lower limbs. 

The body should be elevated slowly 
to the position shown in figure and 
lowered in the same way. The exer- 
cise should be finished however with 
a few snappy movements. 

The daily practice of this exercise 
will give to the carriage that lithesome 
and springy step so much admired 
and so much desired. 




ROPE SKIPPING. 



"f*HE child that invented rope 
$ skipping has done the world a 
great service. I regard it as one of 
the greatest all around exercises known. 
The twirling motion of the hand in 
swinging the single or individual 
rope gives to the wrist, forearm and 
shoulder that character of motion that 
it seldom gets by any movement in 
gymnastics, common every day labor, 
or on athletic machines. 

It has the additional advantage of 
not being burdened with artificial 

weight or savoring of labor, which is 

(265) 



266 PERFECT HEALTH. 

the chief objection to nearly all athletic 
machinery. But on the contrary, it is 
bright, cheerful and entertaining. The 
various artistic movements that can be 
performed with the single rope, if 
studied out, furnishes the highest and 
most cheerful form of needed exercise, 
which is the most difficult thing to 
combine with the ordinary athletic 
training. 

The position assumed when skipping 
the rope is one of the best for deep 
breathing which can be practiced. 
The head and shoulders should be 
kept well thrown back, inhaling and 
exhaling slowly through the nose. It 
is also one of the best known exercises 
for increasing the lung capacity, or 
what is generally known as the wind. 
I regard this exercise as superior to 



ROPE SKIPPING. 267 

walking or running, both of which 
are regarded by athletes as almost 
ideal. 

It possesses still the greater ad- 
vantage of being one of the best pos- 
sible movements for developing and 
strengthening all of the muscles of the 
legs and ankles. We have in this 
simple childish exercise, mental enter- 
tainment, exercise for the wrist, fore- 
arm, shoulder, spine, legs and ankles 
all combined into one. I would advise 
all who are interested in Physical Cul- 
ture in the remotest way to expend a 
penny or two for a rope and lay off 
that monumental bluff called dignity, 
and get out with the children and try 
this charming entertainment. 

No exercise, especially this one, 
should be taken too long. Fatigue is 



FIG. 22. 

This exercise consists entirely in 
raising the toes as high as possible 
and lowering them to the floor while 
resting upon the heels. The body 
should be held erect and rigid while 
going through this movement. 

This exercise, like Fig. 21, is very 

c 

beneficial for the front muscles of the 
lower limbs. 




i 



& 






ROPE SKIPPING. 271 

Nature's warning to stop, and it should 
be obeyed at the first signal. Take no 
chances — Like the Drummer who had 
been the custodian of his mother-in- 
law's will, and while absent from 
home received the following telegram: 
"Mother-in-law dead, shall we cre- 
mate, embalm or burv?" To which he 
replied, " Embalm, cremate and bury, 
take no chances." 

The powers of endurance can be in- 
creased from day to day, and the 
period of fatigue put off further and 
further until one can turn and skip the 
rope from twenty-five to thirty minutes 
without fatigue, or approaching the 
point of weariness. 

When this can be done, twirling 
the rope both backward and forward, 
one can rest assured that they have 



272 PERFECT HEALTH. 

been engaged for thirty minutes in 
one of the most muscle making, lung 
expanding, blood circulating and 
general health giving exercises ever 
invented. 



WHAT IS PHYSICAL 
CULTURE? 

"|MHE answer to this question is a 
^$ summary of all I have en- 
deavored to show in this book. To 
the average person the word physical 
culture means only the making of 
large knotty muscles — the building of 
animal strength. The majority of 
physical culture directors and espec- 
ially that class who have worked up 
the very lucrative practice of teaching 
by mail, all appear to have stopped and 
seem to be willing to rest their claim 
as authorities upon the fact, that they 

teach certain physical movements 

(273) 



274 PERFECT HEALTH. 

better known as exercise. The facts 
are that exercise or any combination 
of physical movements compose only 
one element and by no means the most 
important one of the science of making 
a perfectly developed human body to- 
gether with perfect health. Among 
professional athletes it is nothing un- 
common to find unhealthy men and 
imperfectly developed bodies. Men 
who have given all their attention to 
the physical, i. e., exercise, and totally 
neglected the two other most essential 
elements in making perfect health and 
a perfect body. If my own experience 
had not led me to this conclusion a 
careful study of the question in its 
broadest sense undoubtedly would. 
The very base — the super-structure 
upon which rests all that the word 



WHAT IS PHYSICAL CULTURE? 275 

health means is the building material, 
in other words, what we eat. Perfect 
development and especially perfect 
health, is impossible without a knowl- 
edge of, and obedience to the dietetic 
law. The misfortune in this age is 
that nearly all people are goyerned in 
their eating and drinking by their 
appetite, and that appetite is purely an 
artificial thing — it is made, created and 
produced: it has been made out of 
false materials and under false con- 
ditions. Hence, it has led to unnatural 
and harmful ends. The most difficult 
thing in all health reform work is to 
induce people to eat correctly ; yet when 
once learned the pleasures of eating 
are many times multiplied. When 
natural foods are once adopted they 
are instinctively liked. Hunger then 




< s>«4J ^™ m swr ,,w > < 



FIG. 23. 



From the position shown in figure, 
slowly elevate the body to an erect 
posture and return to position. When 
rising, rest the full weight of the body 
on the toes. 

This is one of the best movements 
known for strengthening all the mus- 
cles of the thighs and lower limbs, 
and is especially beneficial in Loco- 
motor Ataxia. 

Inhale while rising and exhale 
while descending. 




WHAT IS PHYSICAL CULTURE? 279 

can be depended upon to dictate and 
suggest the kind and quantity of food 
demanded by a healthy body. The 
desire for food which governs nearly 
all people in its selection, comes usu- 
ally from a system that is saturated 
with tea, coffee, tobacco, beer, liquor 
or some other narcotic, or that has been 
constructed out of such building ma- 
terial as the dead bodies of other ani- 
mals — milk in an advanced state of 
decay (cheese) — strong condiments 
and highly concentrated sacharine 
matter. Hence the demand made by 
the body which we call appetite, of 
necessity must be for more of the same 
kind of stuff. Perfect health, therefore, 
under these conditions, is not enjoyed, 
and a strong, well developed body is 
out of the question. Incorrect eating 



28o PERFECT HEALTH. 

is the genesis of all stomach disorders 
and stomach trouble is responsible for 
more than 90 per cent, of all human 
ills. 

I have in preparation a thirty day 
natural food Menu Prescription which 
will be divided into four weekly series 
with a Perceptable change for each 
day and a material and natural change 
for each week Q 

Correct or natural eating marks the 
first step from sickness towards health. 

When the proper food has been se- 
lected with which to make force and 
energy, i.e., blood, the next most im- 
portant thing is its proper distribution 
through the body which is determined 
by the kind and amount of exercise 
taken. This is another great factor in 
health that nature could be depended 



WHAT IS PHYSICAL CULTURE? 28 1 

upon to dictate and suggest for us, 
exactly as it does in case of food, if we 
obeyed its laws and mandates. Horses 
and cattle in a pasture have their peri- 
ods of romping, grazing and resting. 
Under natural conditions the desire for 
exercise is just as pronounced as the 
desire for food. A chronic desire for 
inactivity — rest, is a signal that some- 
thing is wrong. It is here that a ma- 
jority of people appeal their case to the 
doctor or strive to get some artificial 
remedy, while a moment's serious re- 
flection and exercise of common sense 
would show them that their illness was 
an unnatural condition, hence it would 
be impossible to remedy it by artificial 
means. It would certainly be obvious 
to every sane person that if they were 
suffering from an unnatural cause, that 



282 PERFECT HEALTH. 

the only way to abolish the cause 
would be to conform to natural re- 
quirements/ 

Unnatural devitalized and super- 
cooked foods have produced an effect 
upon people that might be described 
as lethargic, excitable, irritable and 
unhappy; having therefore violated the 
first great natural law governing the 
production of energy, (blood making) 
the next one (exercise) which governs 
its distribution through the body does 
not assert itself, therefore it becomes 
necessary to force this one, and instead 
of depending upon nature to dictate 
the kind and amount we need, we 
must needs go to instructors and 
teachers. 

When the blood has been made 
from food and distributed by exercise 



WHAT IS PHYSICAL CULTURE? 283 

— the next and by far the most impor- 
tant office is yet to be performed, viz., 
its purification by contact with the air 
in the lungs. 

I have endeavored to make plain the 
value of pure air in my chapter on 
breathing, but it is utterly impossible 
for one person to convey to the mind 
of another by the use of common 
words the importance of doing some- 
thing upon which the whole question 
of body development, health and vital- 
ity depends. 

The most natural and scientific diet 
could be used, and the most perfect 
system of exercise taken, and yet fail 
to produce the proper results if the law 
of body ventilation is not observed. 

There are some questions that go at 
one bound from the domain of doubt 




r^^V-s^-^-s^rV^ 






FIG. 24. 

This illustrates an exercise for the 
neck. 

Place the right hand on the side of 
the head — the left hand on the neck. 

Force the head to the left as far as 
possible with the right hand — resist- 
ing this force with all the power in 
the neck muscles, alternate by chang- 
ing the position of the hands. Repeat 
this movement about a dozen times 
toward each side. 



WHAT IS PHYSICAL CULTURE? 287 

into the realm of absolute certainty; 
there are others that pass into this 
realm through the marts of science and 
over the gyratious road of personal 
experience. 

Perfect health and perfect develop- 
ment, both of which I possess, have 
come to me over the long route. I am 
convinced beyond all possibility of 
doubt that the whole question of gain- 
ing and maintaining these two bless- 
ings is determined and solved by the 
knowledge of how to eat, how to exer- 
cise and how to breathe. 

The one great law governing breath- 
ing, is to fill every air-cell in the lungs 
with every breath — there are some 
conditions however to be observed in 
nearly every individual case, in order 
to involuntarily accomplish this. 



288 PERFECT HEALTH. 

The law of exercise or blood distri- 
bution is a little more complicated 
owing, as stated before, to our false 
habits and environments. The law of 
diet or what to eat, how to eat, and 
when to eat is still more complicated 
or at least harder to obey because we 
are invited — even goaded on to obey 
an appetite for unnatural foods exactly 
as the drinker and morphine taker 
yields to what he calls nature's demand 
for the drug and the drink. 

If I could prescribe for every indi- 
vidual just how to follow these three 
great laws so as to bring them to that 
state of development, health and 
happiness for which nature intended 
them, my work would be ended, and 
my mission in the world complete. 
But in-so-much as nearly every person 



\VHAT IS PHYSICAL CULTURE ? 289 

is a law unto themselves, 1 have there- 
fore provided myself with the best ad- 
visory authority possible to obtain, on 
the subject of diet and general health 
laws, and shall devote my life to the 
mental, the moral and the physical up- 
building of mankind. 



<s? 



FIG. 25. 

This is another Neck exercise and 
differs from Fig. 24 in that it brings 
into action all the muscles of the neck 
without the use of the hands. 

Place the chin on top of the left 
shoulder and move it slowly to the 
right with a downward circle almost 
touching the chest until it comes ver- 
tically over the right shoulder — resist- 
ing the movement with all the power 
possible. 

This movement should be alter- 
nated from side to side from six to a 
dozen times. 




MANKIND. 



E present habits, achievements 
f* and environments of mankind 
which we call civilization, when traced 
genealogically from age to age and 
geographically from land to land is the 
most interesting study that can possibly 
engage the attention of people. Nearly 
all our habits and customs came to us 
by the process of evolution and the 
Genesis of most of them were in ages 
very remote. Take one of our sim- 
plest practices that of bowing to an 
acquaintance as an evidence of recog- 
nition, had its origin about five thous- 
and years ago when the rulers of the 
i 293 ) 



294 PERFECT HEALTH. 

Orient compelled the common people 
to prostrate themselves as an evidence 
of great deference when they passed 
by or came into their August presence. 
It took several thousand years for this 
habit to evolve from a prostrate posi- 
tion to that of bending the body half 
down and it took several thousand 
more for people to come from this cus- 
tom to that of bowing the head, and 
England has not learned that yet. 

The eating habit is one upon which 
if the telescope is turned and it is 
traced far back into the ages, reveals 
some wonderful things. The earliest 
types of anthropoidal man fed wholly 
upon plant life. The next epoch or 
change in the dietary, fruits were added 
to his bill of fare, and next was added 
nuts which according to modern science 



MANKIND. 295 

based upon the requirements of the 
body made up the most perfect diet 
ever known to history. It is impossi- 
ble to give dates with any degree of 
accuracy when these epochs and 
changes were made or how long each 
of them lasted, but we know that about 
ten thousand years ago was the cradle 
of the world in which the mind of man 
was rocked and in which was born all 
the superstitions, some of which have 
shed their shadows down the centuries 
even until now. It was in this age, 
people first began to look up and study 
the great phenomena of nature. They 
saw the sun (as they thought) move 
from one side of the world to the other 
each day. They therefore reasoned 
that it must possess life. It gave 
them warmth, brought their harvest, 



FIG. 26. 
This shows the first position of a 
movement half completed in Fig. 27. 
I would rather miss my dinner than 
miss this exercise. I regard it as one 
of the best movements for the entire 
frame, that is practiced in Physical 
Culture. Assume position as shown 
in this figure and elevate the body to 
the full limit of the arms, and return 
bending only at the waist line, as 
sho^ T n in Fig. 27. 




c 



*% 



*fcP 



MANKIND. 299 

ripened their fruits and prepared na- 
ture's prodigal gifts for their use, they 
naturally began to worship it as a God, 
When the sun hid his face at mid-day 
behind black and frowning clouds and 
the lightning flashed in forked flame 
and the thunder pealed and roared and 
shook the very earth on which they 
stood, and the wind, that great un- 
known force, swept across land and sea 
up-rooting mammoth trees and churn- 
ing the monstrous ocean into froth and 
dashing their crude rafts to splinters, 
they dropped in fear prostrate upon the 
ground. There could be no better 
expression of anger, violence and 
threats than this, they could only rea- 
son that the object of their worship 
was angry and they naturally did 
everything in their power to gain favor 



FIG. 27. 

In executing this movement raise 
the body slowly, elevating the hips as 
shown in this figure, and pushing 
backward without moving the feet — 
inhaling as the body is lowered and 
exhaling as it is raised. 

The benefits from this exercise are 
largely increased by proper breathing, 
which is most always neglected in 
movements where the abdominal mus- 
cles are tensed or brought into active 
use, 



MANKIND. 303 

with the offended God. They sacri- 
ficed their property, children and them- 
selves to the sun, praying for 1 return 
of his favors. Superstition sat at the 
great loom of time and from a warp of 
fear and a woof of want wove habits, 
customs and theories, in the heart and 
brain of infant man, thousands of which 
have rode down the centuries and 
dominate us to-day. It was during 
this age that people conceived the idea 
that in order to possess the qualities of 
any other living thing it was necessary 
to devour that thing ; the crude mind 
could see no other way in which they 
could delegate to themselves the facul- 
ties or properties possessed by another 
form of life except to eat it. When a 
man became old or weak and desired 
to become strong he reasoned that his 



304 PERFECT HEALTH. 

only method was to devour the body 
of some strong animal like the ox. If 
he desired to become fleet-footed he 
would eat the deer or the hare. If he 
wished to possess the superior faculties 
of another man his only chance was to 
eat him. This habit is practiced to- 
day by many of the south-sea Island- 
ers. None of the cannibal races eat 
people from necessity or love of human 
flesh, nor will they ever eat their in- 
feriors. The habit is in reality a part 
of their religion, they have learned that 
the brain is the seat of intelligence and 
that the heart is the throne of the emo- 
tions, and therefore now only eat the 
heart and brain in the belief that by so 
doing they will become endowed with 
the superior faculties of the object upon 
which they have dined. In fact be- 



MANKIND. 305 

hind the meat eating habit of to-day 
among hundreds and thousands of 
people lies this ancient superstition. 

In all human history there is no 
study so interesting and important as 
that appertaining to the things upon 
which mankind subsists. The pro- 
cess by which food is converted into 
blood muscle and brain is practically 
the same in all animals, man included. 
Flesh-eating animals emit a bad odor, 
they are ugly and vicious, they are at 
war with every other living thing, 
hence everything is their enemy. 
They are sluggish and stupid both 
physically and mentally. On the other 
hand non-flesh-eating animals have no 
offensive odor, they are gentle, affec- 
tionate, strong, agile, attractive in 
physique and especially bright men- 



FIG. 28. 

This figure illustrates an exercise 
similar to that shown in Figs. 26 and 
27, with the addition of a chair, which 
makes it more difficult. It should not 
be practiced until the two latter named 
figures can be accomplished with 
some degree of ease. 

The body should be raised to posi- 
tion shown in Fig. 29. 




MANKIND. 309 

tally. The antelope will bound over 
the plains thirty feet at a jump, cover- 
ing a distance of twenty or thirty miles 
before the sun is up for its morning 
drink of clear mountain water, but the 
cinnamon bear that has eaten a jack- 
rabbit for his breakfast couldn't run a 
hundred yards with any degree of 
speed. The carniverous class of ani- 
mals may possess a violent and vicious 
strength but without endurance, with- 
out vivacity and without intelligence. 
These two classes of animals live in 
the same territory, breathe the same 
atmosphere, drink the same water. 
They differ only in diet, are we not 
therefore forced to the conclusion that 
what each class eats has much to do 
with their dispositions and all animal 
faculties? If what animals eat shapes 



G 



FIG. 29. 

From this position lower the body 
to the posture shown in Fig. 28, 
which completes the movement 

Inhale as the body is lowered and 
exhale as it is raised. 

In all probability this exercise brings 
into use more muscles of the body at 
the same time than any one known to 
athletics. 

It is especially good for weakened 
backs, spine and in cases of lumbago. 



MANKIND, 313 

to such a large degree their mental and 
physical differences, is it not then rea- 
sonable to suppose that diet has much 
to do with the physical, the mental and 
even the moral condition of mankind? 
We often hear it said, that America is 
the most progressive and inventive 
nation under the sun and is also the 
largest meat consuming nation in the 
world, therefore the average person 
reasons that genius and progress are 
aided by meat eating. We might as 
well argue that England is the greatest 
fighting nation in the world because 
she drinks most champagne or that the 
Scotch are the most industrious be- 
cause they eat more oat-meal. 

When one has eaten largely of meat 
all their life it may not be best to 
change diet all at once, but that the 



3 H PERFECT HEALTH. 

body will soon adjust itself to a natural 
diet and that the general health and 
vitality will undergo marked improve- 
ment, there can be no question. There 
is also no question but what the senti- 
ments are softened and civilized, that 
the brain is bettered and brightened, 
that the muscles are made healthier 
and harder by subsisting upon a clean 
natural diet. The abnormal body that 
so many people possess both in surplus 
flesh and an emaciated figure is the 
direct result of feeding. Every kind 
and character of food and every drop 
of drink that goes into a human body 
leaves its mark and becomes in some 
way a part of the human machine. 
^ People are extremely careful about the 
kind of material from which their 
clothes are made and the style in which 



MANKIND. 315 

they are fashioned. They exercise 
great care in selecting material from 
which to construct their house and 
much more in furnishing it, and in 
nearly all things they want the best, 
but when it comes to selecting the 
material out of which heart, brain, 
blood, bone, flesh, cartilege and muscle 
are made, — when it comes to selecting 
the material that shapes to such a 
large degree their sympathies, emo- 
tions and morals, — all that is of real 
value in human beings, they exercise 
absolutely no choice — manifest no in- 
terest/ All this is left to an ignorant 
chef, a negro or Chinese cook — it is of 
no importance. They sit calmly down 
to a meal composed of foods, the chem- 
ical action of which upon each other 
are violent and destructive, that will 



\3 




FIG. 30. 

Begin this movement by lying at 
full length, elevating the feet to posi- 
tion shown in figure without bending 
the knees. 

Inhale while lowering and exhale 
while elevating the feet. 

A tendency to hold the breath is 
usually felt while practicing this exer- 
cise. This should be carefully avoid- 
ed, for in order to get the full benefit 
from any exercise plenty of pure air 
should be taken into the lungs to 
purify the increased amount of blood 
that is forced there by the effort. 



w — ^~ 






MANKIND. 319 

cause them to be nervous and dis- 
agreeable, that will dethrone their 
mental powers, emaciate their bodies, 
impair their sight and hearing and 
bring premature old age, with never a 
thought in reference to selecting scien- 
tifically such foods as will give to the 
body its highest degree of energy and 
nutrition. We know to a reasonable 
degree of certainty the chemical com- 
position of the physical man. It is a 
matter of no great labor to ascertain 
the wants and needs of a body which 
is in any w T ay abnormal or unnatural, 
that is, not in perfect health. We can 
go to the laboratory and ascertain ex- 
actly the elements that compose nearly 
all foods, it is therefore entirely within 
the field of the student to feed to the 
body such materials as will bring or 



FIG. 31. 

This movement is in effect much 
the same as Fig. 30 with the addition 
of bringing into active use the muscles 
of the back and neck. If too much 
difficulty is experienced in raising the 
body with the hands clasped behind 
the neck they can be held by the 
sides. 

Inhale as the body is lowered and 
exhale as it is raised. 



i),g N)^=§) 




MANKIND. 323 

even force a perfectly normal or healthy 
condition. If it is within the field of 
science to ascertain the proportion of 
elements composing a healthy body 
and to know also the needs of one that 
is unhealthy or unnatural, it seems but 
a short and easy step to begin the 
work of repair by constructing the un- 
natural or unhealthy body out of ma- 
terials that would bring about a natural 
or healthy condition. The first step in 
constructing a natural or healthy body 
lies in the selection of the building 
materials or the making of healthy 
blood. The next or second step is its 
proper distribution which is determined 
by motion, called exercise, and the 
next and third is its purification which 
is determined absolutely by the kind 
and quantity of air that is breathed. 



324 PERFECT HEALTR 

It does seem that while so much at- 
tention and brain power is being fo- 
cused upon the one question of gain, 
or securing of property, which in its 
last analysis means nothing but an 
insurance policy for a few meals and 
a few clothes, that people might 
sit quietly down and think seriously 
over the question of the material 
out of which they could construct a 
human body in its highest possible 
form. 

The dream of the alchemist was the 
womb of chemistry ; from it was born 
discoveries that has left its indelible 
imprint upon time. My vision of a 
perfectly developed human being may 
be a dream — a name, or it may be an 
atom of radium sending a light into 
the ages that will help to paint across 



MANKIND. 325 

the horizon of the future, the way so 
plain that all may see. 

A perfectly developed man or wo- 
man means far more than the average 
mind has been trained to regard it. It 
means not only a perfect human body, 
but as all human faculties must rest 
upon the physical, it means more 
highly developed sentiments and emo- 
tions — sympathies — joys and ambi- 
tions. 

It means the ability to love with 
greater power and endurance. 

It means a keener sense of sym- 
pathy, of mercy, of tenderness and 
justice. 

It means the highest developed ani- 
mal and magnetic organism, which in 
reality is the hub around which much 
human happiness revolves and upon 



FIG. 32. 

This movement I call "Abdominal 
Massage." It consists in pressing 
first one knee and then the other as 
far as possible towards the chest. 
Inhale deeply every two or three 
movements according to lung capacity. 

This movement is especially recom- 
mended for Indigestion and Constipa- 
tion. It should be practiced for five or 
ten minutes morning and evening of 
each day. 




MANKIND. 329 

which depends the perpetuity of the 
human race. 

It means better husbands, better 
wives, better children, better friends, 
better society, more happiness, more 
sunshine and less gloom. 

It means less avarice, — selfishness 
and sordid desire for wealth, beneath 
the feet of which so many thousands 
are daily being crushed for no other 
purpose than that a few men may rise 
upon the wreck and wraith to the pin- 
nacle of vulgar eminence. 

It means better social conditions 
and a lessening of the desire of 
huma.n leeches and vampires to sit 
upon the back of the real producer of 
wealth, v 

A perfectly healthy man or woman 
can find so many other methods of en- 



330 PERFECT HEALTH. 

joyment — they have the faculties of 
charity and sympathy so well devel- 
oped that they have but little desire to 
prey upon or live as drones from the 
labor of others. 

It would mean a long step in the 
direction of human rights. 
y It would mean a true understanding 
of the definition of human liberty, 
which is the right to do exactly as one 
pleases, so long as the exercise of such 
rights do not trespass upon the rights 
of 'others \/ 



SYNOPSIS OF THE 

MUSCULAR SYSTEM. 




LL the muscles of the human 
body have been given names 
which but few people know or care to 
tax their minds to remember, but it is 
worth while knowing the number of 
muscles in the various parts of the 
body in order that the reader may 
realize the necessity of using or exer- 
cising them, as Nature refuses to keep 
healthy that which is not used. 

The Head contains 31 Pairs, and one single muscle. 



Neck 


45 " " " " 


Abdomen " 


6 Muscles in the Male ) 
and 5 " " " Female, j 




Thorax " 


6 including the dia- 




phragm. 


Back 


21 Pairs which are arranged in 




5 layers 


Upperarm " 


4 Muscles. 


Forearm " 


20 " 


Hand 


19 


Thigh 


24 


Leg 


12 " 


Foot 


20 " 



FIG. 33. 

This movement I have named " In- 
testinal Exercise." It consists in 
bringing the knee with a quick motion 
towards the chest — lifting first one 
knee and then the other — with about 
the speed of a rapid walk. 

The movement shown in this and 
also Fig. 32 serve an especial purpose 
for the Intestinal machinery, because 
they give a movement that is never 
practiced in ordinary vocations. 




/ 



